TrinityReporter
Magazine Issue/May 1976
Issued seven times a year in September,
October, November / December,
January / February, March / April, May and
June .
Published by the Office of Public
Information, Trinity College, Hartford,
Connecticut 06106. Second class postage paid
at Hartford, Connecticut.
The REPORTER is mailed to alumni,
parents, faculty, staff and friends of Trinity
College. There is no charge .
All publication rights reserved and contents
may be reprinted or reproduced only by
written permission of the Editor.
Editor
L. Barton Wilson '37
Assistant Editor
M illi Silvestri
Editorial Advisory Board
Henry A. DePhillips, Jr.
Professor of Chemistry
Gary C. Jacobson
A ssistant Professor of Political Science
Dori Katz
A ssistant Professor of Modern Languages
Dirk Kuyk
Assistant Professor of English
J. Ronald Spencer '64
In structor in History

COVER - David Bushnell's American Turtle ,
the first American submarine. The story of
this remarkab le vessel begins on page 7.

Holy Land! Holy War!
by John A. Gettier

How hard it is to comprehend that in this the firs t year
of the fourth quarter of the twentieth century we are
witnessing conflicts, either simmering or raging, which are
roo ted in religious hostility. In Northern Ireland :
Protestant against Catholic. In Lebanon : Christian against
Muslim. In Israel : Muslim against Jew. Not to mention
Cyprus, India-Pakistan, and the Philippines. In a civilized
world religion should not even be the subject of rancor in
the cocktail chatter of a drawing room much less the
catalyst of war on a battlefield . But then the pretentions of
civilization have been rudely exposed since the Holocaust
of the 30's and 40's and the Vietnam of the 60's. So perhaps
we should not be surprised that religious wars are very
much a part of our age.
Of course, men are not spilling blood over matters of
doctrine; doctrinal battles are now fought with paper and
ink. The bloodletting occurs when religion is linked with
issues of territory, social welfare, culture, and identity.
Such wars are no different from other wars - except they
are fought in the name of God and Truth and dubbed holy.
If anything, holy wars are fought with more ferocity and
with less quarter given, because by definition they always
pit the religious against the heathen, the good against the
evil, the sons of light against the sons of darkness. A holy
war amid twentieth century technology is truly a terrifying
phenomenon, for excited by this-worldly grievances and
other-worldly visions it could well be carried to the
ultimate extreme and convulse om; planet once and for all .
An apocalypse, indeed!
.
It may appear strange to be speaking of religion in
such dynamic terms . In our American society so many
people have outgrown religion, or have become disillusioned with it, or define it so narrowly as to make it
irrelevant. Ritual words are trotted out for ceremonial
occasions like presidential inaugurations and football
games, but we are thoroughly uncomfortable when
religion and social or political action are too closely linked.
Regardless of the causes of current American religious
attitudes and of any evaluation of them, those attitudes
can lead us to minimize the place of religion in our
contemporary world and to underestimate its explosive
power - and we dare not take that risk. We simply cannot
overlook the extraordinary force which religion can and
has exerted in the course of human history nor the passions
with which religious belief is held and which it excites. To
do so is to fail to take seriously a major ingredient in the
concatenation of events in our time. One need not be
"religious" to recognize and respect this primal ingredient,
and one neglects it to the peril of our planet. For good or
for ill, men persist in paying homage to the holy and in

waging war in its name. For good or for ill, men persist in
denying others the right to pay that homage and in waging
campaigns of suppression.
No doubt, modern disregard and / or antipathy toward
religion as a vital factor in current history is fostered by
past actions of religious men and institutions and the
convoluted casuistry which has justified those actions. Too
often religion has been the tool of political opportunists
employed to rationalize a course of action and to rally
popular support. But just as often it has led the sincere
believer into paths of pious pillaging in order to save the
"lost" and promote the kingdom of God. Salvation
through destruction was not the invention of the JohnsonNixon administrations but has always been the motto of
holy warriors as they faced the pagans, barbarians, and
infidels. Woven through the religious texts of Christianity,
Islam, and Judaism, the three monotheistic faiths which
dominate so much of the religious life and thought of our
world, is the assumption that the destruction of the
"wicked" and "godless" is a prelude to and condition of the
establishment of that longed-for kingdom of eternal peace,
and men of good conscience and in the name of
"brotherhood" and "love" have accepted the responsibility
of purging the world and hastening the new era. How
curious is the logic which motivates such deeds, and how
horrifying the spectacle of crusades, inquisitions, pogroms,
and holocausts performed under divine sanction!
One must not, however, confuse religion with human
folly nor assign to God the perverted enthusiasm of men .
Religious human beings are still human beings, and if their
humanity reflects their religious persuasion, it is just as
true that their religious life reflects their humanity in all of
its strengths and weaknesses. Religion cannot be assigned
the blame for all of those atrocities perpetuated in its name,
yet if we are to understand the actions of one who
professes a particular faith, we must know something
about the long tradition which has given shape to that faith
and which is being interpreted in those actions.
Here then is a plea, whether in the intimate area of
personal relationships or the broad arena of national and
international affairs, for dispassionate analysis of the
religious factors which feed group tensions and which too
often explode into cruel warfare. So long as governments
as well as individuals fail to appreciate the religious
dimension of human affairs, little progress can be made
toward reasonable settlement of angry disputes much less
toward the "peaceable kingdom."

1

Holy Land! Holy War!

II
For no area of the world is this plea more urgent than
the Middle East today. Here is soil hallowed by three
religious traditions. Confrontations are, indeed, cultural
and ethnic in origin. They are, indeed, economic and
'political also. However, all confrontations focus upon a
land, not simply because that land is desirable territory for
life and growth but because it is holy. The land is holy to
Muslim, Christian, and Jew, and history has shown that
holy wars have been most bitterly contested over this holy
land.
It is sad to see this continuing hostility between people
of different religions and equally depressing to watch the
super powers pour in their weaponry and use these peoples
as pawns in a larger struggle. That there are legitimate
grievances involved in the disputes for the holy land
cannot be questioned, but twentieth century grievances
will never be resolved until all parties, large and small,
understand what it is that makes this land holy and so
come to respect the religious attachment to it which has
been nurtured not for decades but for centuries and even
millennia. Concern for legitimacy of claims is here
irrelevant. One must first seek to appreciate the depth of
religious conviction involved and the roots of that
conviction in historical tradition.
The context for this developing tradition is a land
which though poor in resources has always been strategic
in location. Bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on one side
and the desert on the other, it makes up part of a narrow
corridor stretching from the borders of the Nile (Egypt)
northward into Mesopotamia (Syria and Iraq). Movement
between these heavily populated areas north and south by
geographic necessity was forced through this corridor, and
to control this movement, whether of trade caravans or
armies, the land was contested by powers large and small,
from the petty kingdoms of Moab and Ammon to the great
nations of Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome,
Turkey, unto the present day .
This factor of location makes the land desirable for
some, but what makes it holy? For Jews the story begins
almost four thousand years ago in the eighteenth century
B.C. when Abraham, living in upper Mesopotamia, heard
and obeyed a command from his God.
"The Lord said to Abram, 'Leave your own country,
your kinsmen, and your father's house, and go to a
country that I will show you. I will make you into a
great nation; and I will bless you and make your
name great so that it will become a blessing."'
Genesis 12:1, 2

2

Jewry's attachment to the land is, therefore, rooted in a
divine promise to Abraham, the first patriarch of the
Jewish people. From its very inception Jewish faith was,
thus, bound up with the land .
In the course of time divine promise was coupled with
divine action, for the Jews have always remembered how
their God delivered them from their slavery in Egypt, led
them on a tortuous journey through a harsh wilderness,
and brought them into the land he had promised them.
This action on their behalf began when God spoke
personally to Moses (Exodus 3); it was only concluded
when Joshua, Moses's successor, marched with his people
into the land and secured it with God's help (Joshua 23).
This initial struggle for the land is the prototype for
the holy war in Israel's tradition. All subsequent wars,
even those projected and mythical ones which would once
and for all destroy evil in this world and provide the
conditions for a new age, were patterned in their telling
after this one war in which God fought to fulfill his
promise to Abraham and provide his descendants with
their own land .
There is a third aspect of this attachment to the land
which might be called divine confirmation. Under King
David Israel did become a great nation as God's original
call to Abraham stated, and that fulfillment in a
magnificent kingdom with its center in the renowned
capital city Jerusalem, made splendid by its royal buildings
and a magnificent temple for worship, was Israel's golden
age . The land originally promised, then won through hard
struggle, now flourished. At every stage of this history it
was understood that God had acted on behalf of his people
and that he would continue to act to sustain them (2
Samuel 7).
The final stage in the development of this tradition
arose from tragedy, for eventually Israel was displaced
from the land by her enemies and was compelled to live in
exile. Yet even in the despair of those events these people
clung to the memory of God's promises and actions of the
past and lived in the fervent expectation of their renewal in
the future. Their hope focused upon a restoration of the
land with a rebirth of the nation under a great leader like
David .
"For this is the word of the Lord : 'The time is coming
when I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel
and bring them back to the land which I gave to their
forefathers; and it shall be their possession."'
Jeremiah 30: 3
This land, therefore, became the focal point of hope
for all Jews during the centuries they have lived and prayed
in strange lands . To the Jew this land is inextricably
interwoven with the very fabric of his faith. Whether he
chooses to live there or not , his understanding of himself
and of his God is tied to the land. So it is a holy land.

To the Christian the land is holy for different reasons .
Here in this land occurred all the momentous events
involving Jesus , and Jerusalem, particularly, is remembered as the focal point not only for the death and
resurrection of Jesus but also for the initial growth of the
early church (Acts 1). Thus, this land is a Christian shrine.
In it the Saviour lived and preached; in it took place those
crucial events of the passion of the Son of God which are at
the heart of the Christian faith; in it there occurred those
actions of God through his Spirit by which the faith would
spread and salvation would be brought to all the world.
This land is more than a shrine to Christians,
however. Though it may be easy to forget, Jesus was a Jew,
and his first followers were Jews as were the first members
of the early church. Therefore, all that has been said about
Jewish attachment to the land is in some sense applicable to
the Christians. One may argue that Jesus reinterpreted the
ancient traditions and gave them broader application, but
the hope which Jesus is understood to fulfill grew out of
that expectation spawned by divine promise, action, and
confirmation, an expectation rooted in this holy land, if
going beyond it. And at the end of days when this order
with its evil are destroyed , the Christian envisions a new
heaven and new earth from God the center of which will be
a new Jerusalem (Revelation 21).
Similar observations can be made about Islam. The
land is holy because it includes so many shrines
commemorating for the faithful significant events and
burial grounds . The central event, of course, is the
ascension of the prophet Muhammad from the temple
mount in Jerusalem. On this site is erected the Dome of the
Rock, making Jerusalem along with Mecca and Medina
one of the three most holy places in the world for Muslims .
In fact , the sanctity of Jerusalem is declared in the Koran
by Muhammad himself (Surah 17: 1).
But again the holy land for the Muslim is more than a
place of sacred events and shrines. Muhammad taught that
the religion of Islam, which took shape in the seventh
century A.D., was rooted in ancient traditions dating back
to the patriarch Abraham.
"We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto
us and that which is revealed unto Abraham, and
Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and that
which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the
prophets received from their Lord."
Surah 2:136

Far from being something new in Muhammad's lifetime,
Islam is understood to be intimately tied to Abraham and
with him to the land which God promised. Furthermore,
Abraham is recognized as neither Christian nor Jew but as
father of the people who worship Allah . Indeed,
Muhammad explained that the very word "Islam" and its
idea of complete dedication to God came from Abraham .
"He [Allah] hath chosen you and hath not laid upon
you in religion any hardship; the faith of your father
Abraham is yours. He hath named you Muslims [i.e.
those who have surrendered ] of old time and in the
Scripture .... "
Surah 22:78
Thus, we have a situation in which three religions
not only see their origins in the same land but also thro ugh
the very same traditions variously interpreted. Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity stand in a close family relationship,
and the tensions, past and present, which have existed
among their adherents over this land are more than
tensions between neighbors. They are the bitter tensions
among relatives to each of whom the land is in some way
crucial for self-definition.
Holy wars over a holy land! Those wars were fought
even in the time of Abraham so many centuries ago. They
are still being waged today. And they will continue to be
waged until combattants and diplomats at large discover in
religious psychology and tradition the roots of the tenacity
with which this land is cherished by so many people. Then
perhaps immediate demands and grievances can be put in
perspective, and we might envision a holy land ennobled
by a holy peace.

Dr. John A. Gettier is an associate professor and chairman
of the Department of Religion. He has been a member of
the faculty since 1966.

3

The Wheaton Collection: Trinity College's First Library
by Peter]. Knapp
In the Summer of 1823 the Trustees of the newly
chartered Washington College appointed one of their
number, the Reverend Nathaniel Wheaton, to proceed to
England to obtain financial support, books and scientific
apparatus. In the course of a year Wheaton acquired the
initial collection for the college's library through judicious
expenditure and the support of friends of the college
abroad and at home. This study will examine the books he
assembled, known now as the Wheaton Collection, in an
effort to show their contemporary importance to
Washington College students and faculty and to suggest
their abiding value more than one-hundred fifty years later
to the Trinity College of today.
Nathaniel Sheldon Wheaton was born in August, 1792
in Marbledale, near Washington, Connecticut. He
prepared for college at the Episcopal Academy in Cheshire
and graduated from Yale in 1814. For a short time he
taught school in Maryland while he was preparing for the
Episcopal priesthood to which he was ordained in 1818.
After serving as Rector of a Maryland parish he came to
Hartford in March, 1820 to serve as Assistant Rector of
Christ Church (now the Cathedral) whose Rector was then
Bishop Brownell. In April, 1821 Wheaton became Rector
of Christ Church where he served for ten years until
assuming office as the second President of Washington
College in October, 1831.
Wheaton's term as President was marked by a
consolidation of the college's financial situation and
physical plant. He was instrumental in establishing the
endowed Hobart and Seabury professorships and continued to support the inclusion of the sciences in a narrow
traditional curriculum. In February, 1837 Wheaton
resigned the Presidency to return to the duties of a parish
priest and became Rector of Christ Church in New
Orleans . Here he distinguished himself during an epidemic
of yellow fever in ministering to the needs of the stricken
citizenry. By 1844 his health had become severely impaired
as a result of contracting the fever and he was forced to
resign. After a recuperative trip to Europe he returned to
Hartford and finally settled in Marbledale. For the
remainder of his life he was unable to pursue an active
ministry and contented himself with his studies and
intermittent assistance in services at local parishes. He died
in March, 1862 at the age of 70.
Judging from the entertaining description of his
year-long trip to Europe in 1823-1824 which Wheaton
published as Journal of a Residence During Several Months
in London . . . (Hartford, 1830), he evidently enjoyed
himself despite some disappointing reverses encountered in
his attempts to raise funds for the college. As an
omnivident traveller he seems to have missed few of the
sights worth seeing, but he did find the time to discharge
his obligation to assemble the first library collection for

4

Washington College. His efforts in this regard were
devoted to the selection and purchase of books and to
seeking donations of books or the funds with which to buy
them from potential friends of the college.
Providentially for the researcher the original invoices
testifying to Wheaton's book acquisitions survive in the
Trinity College Archives. These, in company with the
original manuscript catalog of the 'Wheaton Books' which
was prepared upon his return to Hartford in November,
1824, allow us to reconstruct his work. In all Wheaton
assembled 400 titles which are carefully listed in the
manuscript catalog, the humble predecessor of the modern
card catalog. Of the 400, 212 titles or 53 percent were
purchased for a little less than $1,800.00.
Wheaton's first purchases were made in Paris,
probably from several sources over a period of days since
the invoice was prepared for a shipping firm and dated
August 16, 1824. Five cases containing 134 titles were
shipped from Paris to Havre and there placed by the firm
of Lunnel on the sailing ship Marmion, Captain Nagel,
Master, bound for New York. The consignees were Messrs.
Haydn & Timmings, 58 Pine Street, New York, and they
duly arranged for shipment to 'Washington College,
Connecticut' via a Captain Francis of the Hartford packet,
undoubtedly a coastal schooner.
The next purchase was consummated at the London
bookselling firm of Rivingtons and Cochran where 78 titles
exchanged hands for the sum of ÂŁ134.4s. As in the case of
their French counterparts Rivingtons gave a respectable
discount for payment in hard cash. These books were
likewise shipped to Messrs. Haydn & Timmings by
westbound packet.
In his Journal (p .90) Wheaton observed, upon viewing
the library of St. John's College, Cambridge:
Twenty-four thousand volumes arranged in stalls
around the room make a goodly show; and it is a
circumstance worthy of being borne in mind by the
patrons of literature and science in our young
republic, that the noble libraries which are the pride
and boast of the English universities, have been
principally made up by the donations of private
individuals.
This statement about the importance of donors was as
significant in 1823 as it is today, and Wheaton enjoyed
modest success in this regard. Thomas Horne, a biblical
scholar and bibliographer, and the Reverend Dr. George
Gaskin, formerly Secretary of the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, contributed between them 41 titles.
The major gift was in the form of a subscription of funds
which enabled Wheaton to purchase 110 titles from the
firm of William Sior in Brighton. Unfortunately the
individuals or group responsible for this generous

assistance are not identifiable. A few gifts from
sympathetic Anglican clergymen round out the books sent
from Europe.
Wheaton thus acquired 158 titles by donation or
subscription. Either during or prior to November, 1824,
and perhaps as a result of seeing the fruits of Wheaton's
labors, one of the local supporters of the college and a
future trustee, Martin Welles of Hartford, donated 30 titles
worth $75.00. Adding this figure to those enumerated
above we find that Wheaton had succeeded in securing 188
donated titles for the infant Washington College Library.
The reader will note that in discussing the Wheaton
Collection reference has been made to titles, not to
volumes. A title may comprise several volumes, and care
must be taken when analyzing a book collection to
distinguish between the number of individual works and
the number of volumes, the latter a measure only of
physical bulk. Thus the 400 titles originally forming the
Wheaton Collection constituted 1146 volumes.
A survey of the distribution of titles in the collection
grouped by major discipline reveals that 33.5 percent (134
titles) represented works dealing in some way with
organized religion and theology. The relative size of this
category is not surprising and included are works of the
church fathers, collections of sermons, theological
discourses and biblical texts. Excluded from the figure are
titles concerned with the impact of religion on historical
periods, for example accounts of 'religious' wars, and
works of politico-religious significance such as those
discussing the Council of Trent. These texts on religious
history (16 titles) accounted for 4 percent of the Wheaton
Collection.
The second major body of material in the collection
was composed of the works of the Greek and Latin
classical authors- 91 titles or 22.7 percent. The remaining
portion of the Wheaton books was divided thusly :
Literature and Languages, including grammars and a fine
selection of major French authors - 59 titles: 14.7
percent; Natural and Physical Sciences, including Mathematics - 26 titles: 6.5 percent; History , Travels and
Voyages - 25 titles: 6 percent; Economics and what
would now be considered Political Science - 11 titles: 3
percent; Philosophy - 9 titles: 2.3 percent; Biography 5 titles: 1.3 percent; and Miscellaneous, some of which
defy classification - 24 titles: 6 percent.
Wheaton's personal library, an undated manuscript
catalogue for which exists in the Trinity Archives, shows a
remarkably similar breakdown to that described above,
with the exceptions of books on religion and the Greek and
Latin authors. The former accounts for 50 percent of the
345 titles listed, and the latter are not as well represented.
The personal collection was willed to the college at
Wheaton's death, and its contents reflect a catholicity of
intellectual interest encompassing more than biblical texts
and sermons . A similar breadth marks the library
collection acquired in 1824, and suggests a large measure of
personal selection. Wheaton undoubtedly had some advice
on what to obtain from Bishop Brownell who was well
read and supported the incorporation of the sciences in the
curriculum. Wheaton himself was interested in the
practical science of architecture and helped plan the new
Christ Church building completed in 1829.

Of the 400 titles forming the Wheaton Collection 334
remain at present in the Trinity College Library. These
were reassembled about twenty years ago from the
circulating collection, and a small number are replacements for the original copies which were lost in the course
of 150 years. A sampling of the remarkably large number
of surviving works, many in early editions, which can be
identified from the original manuscript catalog, reveals the
following interesting titles. Apart from the numerous
books on religion and theology represented by the works
of St. Augustine (1680), John Calvin (1671), and Richard
Allestree's instructive The Whole Duty of Man (1726), the
inquisitive Washington College student could find much of
value. In religious history there are represented the
seventeenth-century Italian prelate and historian Paolo
Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent (1676), an English
translation by Nathaniel Brent; and the works of the
first-century historian Flavius Josephus (1726).
Among the Greek and Latin classical writers may be
found the works of Tacitus, Thucydides, Herodotus, Livy,
Pliny, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Vergil and an edition of the
Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1709). In Literature and
Languages there are Johnson's Dictionary of the English
Language (1818) and his Works (18:?.3); Robert Anderson's
multi-volume Complete Edition of the Poets of Great
Britain (1792-1807) which includes Chaucer and Shakespeare; Corneille's Theatre (1764); La Fontaine's Fables
(1795); LeSage's Histoire de Gil Bias de Santillane (1818);
the works of Moliere (1821), Montesquieu (1763), Racine
(1808), Rousseau (in 38 volumes, 1788-1793), Voltaire (in
30 volumes, 1768), and Dante (Venice, 1741).
In the Natural and Physical Sciences we may note the
famed seventeenth-century English naturalist John Ray's
Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation
(1743); Jean Delambre's Astronomie Theorique et Pratique
(1814), one of several titles on astronomy; Traite
Elementaire de Physique (1806), by the Abbe Rene Hauy,
eminent French mineralogist and the founder of the science
of crystallography; the English scientist William Whewell's
Treatise on Dynamics (1823); the eighteenth-century
French naturalist Georges Buffon's famed Histoire
Naturelle (1769-1790 in 57 volumes); and the Italian
mechanician Giuseppe Borgnis' Traite Complet de Mecanique Appliquee aux Arts . . . (1818-1823), a fascinating
ten-volume set discussing mechanical applications in the
fields of hydraulics, agriculture, industrial fabrication,
etc.; and the same author's Traite Elemehtaire de
Construction Appliquee a L'Architecture Civile (1823).
In the fields of History, Travel and Voyages there are
available John Pinkerton's Modern Geography (1817); the
sixteenth-century Spanish historian Luis del Marmo! y
Carvajal's L'A frique (a French translation dated 1667)
which describes the history and development of Africa;
Michel Crevecoeur's Voyage dans Ia Haute Pensylvanie et
dans L'Etat de New York (1801); Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire Histoire et Critique (1740); Sir Walter Raleigh's
History of the World (1687); and, among several works in
French history, the seventeenth-century Italian soldier and
historian Enrico Davila's History of the Civil Wars of
France (1758).
The student interested in Economics and Politics could
choose from Adam Smith's Works (1811-1812); Locke's

5

Two Treatises on Government (1728); the seventeenthcentury Dutch jurist and statesman Hugo Grotius' classic
of international law De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1720); the Earl
of Sheffield's Observations on the Commerce of the
American States (6th edition, 1784); the Correspondence
of Louis XVI (1803); and Thomas May's History of
Parliament (1812) .
Readers with a desire to study the classics of
Philosophy could select the works of Leibnitz (1768) and
Bacon (1819), while the interest in Biography might be
stimulated by exploring Alexander Chalmers' massive
General Biographical Dictionary in 32 volumes (18121817), a work still valuable for research. Some miscellaneous titles include a copy of the Stranger's Guide Through
the University and City of Oxford (c. 1824), and the Royal
Blue Book (1824), a guide to contemporary London society
and its haunts . Both works were probably used by
Wheaton during his stay in England. Rounding out the
sampling of titles is John Johnson's Typographia (1824), a
compendium of information on printing which incorporates a history of the dissemination of scholarship.
Wheaton presumably hoped that the books he
procured while on his travels abroad would be well utilized
by the students and faculty of Washington College. An
oblong journal containing circulation records for the
period from 1827 to 1840 is preserved in the Trinity
Archives. The records are arranged alphabetically by the
name of the student or faculty member, and the books
were signed out to them. The notation 'RT was usually
entered next to a title upon its return. Unfortunately for us,
but readily understandable, pages were torn out periodically as they became filled. The records from about 1833 to
1840 are generally intact, and leafing through them with an
eye pealed for Wheaton Collection titles, we find
unmistakable evidence that they did receive use in
respectable numbers. Undoubtedly exceptional students
and the faculty benefited most from the collection. This is
borne out by the great number of entries for students who
later became faculty and presidents of the college. These
include John Williams (Class of 1835), Abner Jackson
(Class of 1837) and Thomas Ruggles Pynchon (Class of
1841), all of whom read prodigiously, subsequently taught
at the college and eventually became President. Also
noteworthy are Eben Edwards Beardsley (Class of 1832),
who was a tutor from 1833 to 1835, and Silas Totten, who
joined the faculty in 1833 and was President from 1837 to
1848. Totten, Jackson and Pynchon served in the capacity
of Librarian and were responsible for maintaining the
circulation records.
In general most students made modest use of the
Library . The curriculum, in keeping with the tendency of
the day, involved work from textbooks, and it is
questionable how many students were motivated to do
more than the minimum. Only those with a sound
background in Latin and Greek, and perhaps some French,
could thoroughly explore the breadth of the Wheaton
Collection. A reasonable competence in Latin and Greek
was required for admission to college, but French received
little formal attention in this period. Despite the problem
of language competence there was still much that could be
readily used in the collection.

6

Rules governing the Library housed in Seabury Hall
did not promote intense use of the collection, but we must
remember the relative scarcity then prevailing of what the
modern student takes for granted. The Library was not
available to the public and was open only a few hours
during the week. The Librarian, usually appointed from
among the faculty, 'prescribed' the order in which students
might visit the Library, a privilege granted in return for
one dollar per term of the general expenses fee . The
number of books which might be signed out was in direct
proportion to their physical size, by extension a measure of
their relative value and a common arrangement of the
period. A student could take out only one folio (generally a
large, bulky book) which might be kept four weeks. One
quarto (a book of average size today) might be borrowed
for three weeks, and either one octavo or two duodecimos
might be retained for two weeks . No reader other than a
facurty member, whose limit was twelve, could borrow
more than three books at a time. Fines were assessed for
late returns and damages to books, and no person could
"lend to another any book which he has received from the
Library, under penalty of losing the privilege of borrowing
for one year." Library Regulations conclude with mention
of the time-honored annual housecleaning when the books
and shelves would be "freed from dust."
The library collections grew slowly but steadily
during the first decade of the college's existence, and by
1832 numbered 1168 titles. This figure was small in
comparison to the number of books in the personal library
of Dr. Samuel Farmar Jarvis, a member of the faculty
during the mid-1830's, and a noted scholar of linguistics
and church history. His collection, valued for its strength
in literature and history, contained well over 5000 volumes
(an estimated 2000-2500 titles), and in size must be ranked
among the larger private and institutional libraries then
existing in the United States. Before departing for an
extended sojourn in Europe in 1826, Jarvis deposited his
library at the college. But this arrangement was temporary,
and in 1837, having served but two years on the faculty,
Jarvis left, taking his library with him. The students and
faculty thus had to rely upon the college collection,
estimated at no more than 1500 titles, and the student
literary society libraries of modest size. For the balance of
the century gradual growth characterized the pattern of
library development.
The significance of the Wheaton Collection onehundred fifty years after its formation lies less in the worth
of its constituent titles , some of which are notable editions
of important works, than in the sum of those titles - the
collection viewed as a whole. Herein has survived a
window into a world of intellect that has practically
vanished. We have a unique opportunity to examine
patterns of thought that dominated the seventeenth ,
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as evidenced in a
small , cohesive library. Assembled for the students and
faculty of a new institution of higher learning, the
Wheaton Collection was the humble foundation of Trinity
College's modern academic library.

"An Effort of Genius" A Tale for
the American Bicentennial
by Richard K. Morris

On a mild night near the end of August, 1776, Lord
Howe's 64-gun flagship H.M .S. Eagle rolled gently amidst
a British fleet anchored in New York Bay. Had the watch
on board the Eagle leaned over the side about the stroke of
eight bells, he might have detected a slight swirl in the slack
water. He might have heard a distinct click of metal on
metal coming from below the waterline of the ship - then
another click and another. Had he crossed the deck to the
opposite rail and looked below, he might have spied new
eddies rising to the surface. But these opportunities passed.
Some time later in the first flush of dawn a lookout
spotted a strange object moving slowly up the harbor. It
appeared to be a black pot set atop a round mass which
barely broke water. A warning sounded. The fleet came
alive. From Governor's Island, already in the hands of the
British, a gig was launched to investigate. When the boat
pulled to within a few yards of the intruder, the officer in
charge gave the order to come about, possibly sensing
some Yankee trickery. A moment later an explosion rent
the air and a column of water spurted skyward. There
must have been a grateful crew aboard that gig.
This was the first attack by a submarine on an enemy
ship in all of naval history. David Bushnell's American
Turtle, piloted by the cool-headed Ezra Lee, nearly
succeeded in sinking a great man-o-war hundreds of times
its own size. It was the colonial version of David and
Goliath. George Washington wrote to Thomas Jefferson,
26 September 1787:
Bushnell is a man of great mechanical powers fertile of invention- and a master of execution. He
came to me in 1776 recommended by Governor
Trumbull (now dead) and other respectable
characters who were privelites to his plan. Although
I wanted faith myself, I furnished him with money
and other aids to carry it into execution. He
laboured for some time ineffectually, and though
the advocates for his scheme continued
undiminished [?] he never did succeed. One accident
or another was always intervening.

Washington on Staten Island and was able to double the
British threat with the arrival in the harbor of the fleet of
his brother, Admiral, Lord Richard Howe. Lord Richard
actually carried letters of commission directing him to
open peace negotiations with the rebels, but since these
were addressed to a "Mr. Washington," the American
General found it convenient to dismiss the overtures. The
17,000 man Continental Army, of which probably no
more than 10,000 were disciplined fighting men, now
confronted 30,000 British veterans and a powerful armada
of warships and transports. Washington was forced to
retreat from Long Island and to prepare a stand on
Manhattan.
It is little wonder that the colonial leader who had yet
to score a major victory in the rebellion against British
bondage should lend a willing ear and even a helping hand
to proposals for any device, however preposterous,
infernal or otherwise, which might give him that miracle he
so sorely needed to bolster the dwindling morale of the
revolutionaries. Jefferson, in his inquiry to Washington
about Bushnell's submarine, recollected how they (the
Americans) "were so peculiarly in want of such an agent."
Victory, not idealism, was the' immediate issue. Washington was privy to the secret weapon of David Bushnell
through communications with Governor Trumbull. It is
likely that the "War Office" in Lebanon, Connecticut,
supplied some materials for the venture through Jonathan
Trumbull's son Joseph who in July of 1775 had been named
Commissary General for the Continental troops. Washington nearly had his miracle that night in late August 1776,
and he concluded his letter to Jefferson, saying:
I then thought and still think that it was an effort of
genius ....
David Bushnell (1742-1826) solved the problem of
exploding gunpowder under water while he was still an
undergraduate at Yale College. Back at his home in
Westbrook (then part of Old Saybrook), Connecticut, he
engaged in the clandestine business of building a
submarine. He took into his confidence his brother Ezra, a
fellow Yale alumnus- Dr. Benjamin Gale of neighboring
Killingworth, and through Gale, Silas Deane of Wethersfield . Out on a lonely sand bar known as Poverty Island in
the mouth of the Connecticut River, an island since washed
away by the onslaught of flood and tide, the Bushnell
brothers built a crude shelter around a fish seine and in this
shelter their secret work began.

Imagine "Mr. Washington" trying to defend the little
city of New York in the late Summer of 1776. The Second
Continental Congress voted that he should defend it at all
costs . Sir William Howe chose to evacuate Boston after the
June Battle. of Breed's Hill and withdrew to Halifax to
muster additional strength for his professional army drawn
to support his suppression of the American radicals and to
demand their allegiance to the Crown. He caught up with

7

"An Effort of Genius"

The American Turtle was seven feet along its vertical
axis, six feet along its horizontal axis, composed of two
half tortoise-shaped shells made of staves of wood covered
with tar. An elliptical protuberance of brass fitted to an
iron ring occupied the position analogous to the turtle's
head and represented the top-sides of the one-man craft.
Ingress and egress to the submarine were provided by a
hatch on top of the "head." Suspended from the bottom of
the craft was a detachable lead weight of about two
hundred pounds that served the dual purpose of anchor
and safety device . Its release would assure a sudden surplus
of positive buoyancy and quickly return the boat to the
surface, even though the skipper might find himself upside
down. Mounted piggy-back on the stern of the Turtle was
a detachable powder keg.
The interior of the Turtle was amazingly complex. A
seat for the operator ran athwart the boat - adding lateral
strength to the structure - a masterful precaution against
collapse by pressure from without. In front of the operator
was a crank on the outboard axle of which was attached
"an oar, formed on the principle of the screw." The most
frequ ently reproduced sketch of the Turtle represents a
helical propeller, but for several reasons this representation, though useful, is highly suspect. First, the drawing
was made by Lt. F. M. Barber a full century after the
construction of the Turtle. The operator's sartorial style is
obviously Victorian, as is the haircut and beard. Later
illustrators shrewdly changed the attire to that more
befitting a Colonial gentleman, but they failed to modify
any of the mechanical features in Barber's interpretation.
Secondly, the ship's propeller, as we now know it today,
did not come into general use until thirty years later. While
Alan Burgoyne (1903) would have Bushnell returning to
conventional oars protruding through leather sleeves in the
fashion of Van Drebbel (1620), it is possible that the "oar,
formed on the principle of the screw" was a type of
paddle-blade with the pitch (or angle) fixed at the hub, a
forerunner of Robert Fulton's "fly." The single bit of
evidence in favor of Barber's drawing is a passage in a
report made in later years by Fulton. This artist-inventor
declared that he had introduced the "fly," a two-bladed
affair, because he discovered that the complete twist of an
Archimedian screw was unnecessary.
In front of the little conning tower another "oar,
formed on the principle of the screw" was directed upward,
its axle terminating in the second crank in the interior
below the head of the operator. This propeller was used to
drive the Turtle up or down when near-neutral buoyancy
had been estab lished. The boat was steered by an off-set
tiller tucked under the left arm of the navigator. A lever on

8

the decking forward and within reach of the pilot's foot
could be depressed to open a port valve under the hull to
flood the water ballast tanks. To raise the vessel, two brass
piston pumps were manually operated to empty the tanks.
Air for breathing was supplied from the surface through a
tube extending above the after part of the conning tower.
This tube was ingeniously rigged with a flapper valve
which automatically closed when a wave slapped the tube's
mouth or the vessel descended. A companion tube
exhausted impure air. The amount of air contained in the
Turtle once totally submerged, was sufficient to sustain the
operator for thirty minutes.
The navigational aids and armament were simple but
effective. An eighteen inch u-shaped glass tube sealed at
one end, and open to the sea at the other, contained a cork
float illuminated by fox-fire (phosphorescence emitted
from rotten wood). As the cork rose or fell against
gradati~ns on the tube, supposedly one inch to the fathom,
the skipper could with fair accuracy measure the depth at
which he operated. The compass mounted in the loop of
the fathometer also had its needle illuminated by fox-fire to
enable the pilot to plot his course. Above these crude
instruments a small crank turned a slotted brass tube
extending outside the hull and into which was set a wood
auger or screw. When the screw was turned into the
bottom sides of a surface vessel (such as the Eagle), or
driven there by increasing the submarine's buoyancy, the
screw so attached to the ship's hull was then released by
backing off to allow the auger to slip free of the brass tube.
Now from the auger a lanyard ran aft to the magazine or
torpedo. Presume the wood bit to be set fast into the
bottom of a ship. The operator simply released the powder
keg from the outer shell of the Turtle and left it hanging by
the lanyard attached to the auger. The magazine contained
150 pounds of gunpowder, but since it was encased in a
split shell of oak it was buoyant enough to rise up. again~t
the undersides of the ship's hull and there remam untll
exploded by a clock mechanism activated when the
magazine was released.
It should be clear from this description that a
multi-armed Krishna was required to man the Turtle. Yet
the near success of this submarine in its attack on the
British frigate Eagle in New York Bay in 1776 was proof
that Bushnell had designed an especially effective one-man
vessel. It is probable that the innovative application of
copper sheathing to the bottom of the Eagle saved the
flagship of Lord Howe from destruction. The indomitable
Lee was able to retreat to Whitehall Stairs, Manhattan, but
not until he had released his powder keg and frightened the
British. He returned to the plaudits of Generals Israel
Putnam and Parsons who waited on the shore. Two

further attempts farther up the Hudson River also failed,
but the courage of Sergeant Ezra Lee of Old Lyme,
Connecticut, in the first two of these sorties, is not to be
forgotten. Indeed, as Washington put it: " . . . too many
things were necessary to be combined to expect much from
the issue against an enemy who are always upon guard."
Bushnell's remarkably complete vessel, by far the
most perfect and effective submarine boat built
before 1881, remained unappreciated in America,
although his American turtles might have prevented
the capture of Washington and rendered America
invulnerable to England in 1812 had they been in
hands accustomed to their management.
So wrote John P. Holland, the submarine genius of the
19th century, in the annual marine issue of Cassier's
Magazine , (London, 1897).
The "firsts" which Bushnell chalked up in the history
of submarine navigation constitute an excellent summary
of his work. His was the first American submarine. He was
the first to make of an underwater craft a formidable
weapon of naval warfare and the first to use this weapon in
an actual engagement against the enemy. He was the first
to employ piston pumps to empty the water ballast tanks
or alternately to assist the skipper in the trimming of his
submarine; the first to suggest a "torpedo" (a word later
coined b y Robert Fulton); the first to prove that
longitudinal stability could be achieved without the
unnecessary length usually associated with surface vessels
- indeed, the Turtle stood on end. Bushnell demonstrated
the potency of a one-man submarine either for harbor
defense or as a raider. Perhaps to Bushnell also belongs the
credit for designing the first practical propeller "formed on
the principle of the screw."
The Turtle was sunk by the British during passage on
a barge a few days after the abortive attempts on Lord
Howe's fl eet. Bushnell is said to have recovered his
submarine, but abandoned any attempts to develop it. "I
had been in a bad state of health from the beginning of my
undertaking, " he wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1789, "and
now was very unwell; the situation of public affairs was
such that I dispaired of obtaining public attention and the
assistance necessary. "
But Bushnell's threat to the British was not over. In
1777 he attempted to sink the frigate Cerebus as she lay at
anchor in Niantic Bay, west of New London, Connecticut.
The curiosity of a prize crew aboard the American
schooner tied astern of H.M.S. Cerebus led to the death of
three and the loss of the schooner, though the Cerebus
went unscathed. The men had picked up a line attached to
the frigate. At the end of this line Bushnell had planted an
"infernal machine, " a kind of tandem torpedo set to
explode on contact at different depths. The crew aboard

the schooner, thinking the line was that of a fisherman,
hauled aboard a strange device, examined it, and
inadvertently turned an attached wheel setting off a timing
device that led to the fatal explosion.
By December 1777, Bushnell's activities took him to
Brandon, New Jersey . The British had sealed off the sea
approaches to the capital at Philadelphia by stationing its
fleet in the Delaware River. Bushnell's plan was to release
kegs of gunpowder suspended below the water from small
floats. The kegs were set to explode on contact with a solid
object, using a flintlock to trigger them. Again the
inventor's ingenuity was thwarted by circumstances
beyond his control, for the British had moved their ships
out of the line of the floating kegs to berths along the shore
in order to avoid ice floes that descended on the early
January tides . The incident is preserved in the doggerel of
Colonial poet Francis Hopkinson as "The Battle of the
Kegs," a verse which pokes fun at the British for being
perturbed by Bushnell's experiments. Captured by the
enemy, Bushnell was promptly released and his true
identity was never revealed.
After the Revolution, Bushnell sojourned in France.
He began a correspondence with Thomas Jefferson
regarding potential submarine warfare. Robert Fulton, also
in Europe at the time, initiated his own persistent effort to
interest several governments in his able underwater craft,
the first of a long line of submarines to bear the name
Nautilus. But Bushnell tried in vain to interest the French
government in his American turtles. Already sensitive to
the moral cries against him for devising "infernal and
cowardly weapons," and certainly suffering for lack of
funds, he returned to America in complete anonymity .
He settled in Georgia under the assumed name of Dr. Bush
and practiced medicine until his death in 1826 . David
Bushnell's eighteenth century efforts at submarine navigation constitute a unique page in the story of the American
Revolution , for "that's the way it was 200 years ago."

Or. Richard K. Morris, Class of 1940, served on the Trinity
faculty from 1951 until his retirement last year. He is
professor of education, emeritus.

9

President Ford and the Regulatory Agencies: A Step Towards Deregulation?

Within the last two years President Ford has on
occasion urged proposals designed to alter significantly the
scope and ~unctions of the Federal regulatory agencies. I
Specifically on October 8, 1974, the President asked
Congress to create a commission on regulatory reform to
study and recommend the elimination of particular
regulations that increased costs but did not result in
benefits to the consumer. Again in April, 1975, largely as a
means of countering Congressional legislation establishing
a Federal consumers protection agency, President Ford
" argued that deregulation would be a greater benefit to the
consumer than a new agency. 2

There is no guarantee
that the current level of interest
in regulatory reform will result
in substantive changes in the
scope and activities of the
Federal regulatory agencies.
That there does exist rather widespread discontent
with Federal regulatory agencies has been attested by
articles published even in local papers. 3 Whether this
discontent can be perceived as a cohesive reform
movement to eliminate or seriously curtail regulatory
activities is less certain. 4 Moreover, the Ford proposal to
study the regulatory system is not new. Since 1937 studies
have been conducted on at kast six occasions, with the
latest in 1971 at the request rA then President Nixon. He in
turn subsequently refused to endorse the sweeping changes
in administrative structure that the report recommended. 5
As a result the proposals soon fell into limbo. There is,
therefore, no guarantee that the current level of interest in
regulatory reform will result in substantive changes in the
scope and activities of the Federal regulatory agencies.
Nevertheless, the President's interest in regulatory
reform does afford the opportunity to examine critically
the institution of regulation both in light of its historical
mission and as it is currently practiced. Accordingly, in the
space allotted us we shall deal briefly with the major
historical issues involved in the evolution of regulation
and regulatory objectives . This will be followed by a
suggested framework for analyzing the effects of regulation. We shall conclude with an evaluation of the merits as
well as speculate on the chances for regulatory reform;
specifically on those reforms leading to deregulation. At
the outset we must recognize that a short survey of this
nature can only touch upon the major poiri.ts of a

10

complicated subject. We can only hope that what may be
lost through oversimplification is more than made up
through clarification of the central issues involved in
evaluating this unique and distinctly American institution.
II

It would considerably simplify our discussion of
regulation if there were a clearly defined set of objectives to
guide government policy. Unfortunately, this is not the
case. To beg the question, regulation is all too often what
regulators do. Morever, they do it rather extensively at
both the Federal and state level. Under statutes gran.ting
varying degrees of authority to a number of agencies,
regulation encompasses banking, finance, and insurance as
well as public utilities, transportation and the communications industries. Together these industries generate about
19 percent of all the wages, rents, interest, and profits
earned in the United States. 6
The Constitutional basis for this authority rests in the
right of the state to intervene in industries "affected with
the public interest." But what constitutes the public interest
and what industries would be affected? The British legal
tradition dating back to 1670 granted monopoly status to
suppliers of important transportation services deemed to
be "affected with the public interest."7 In return for the
franchise accorded them these suppliers had an obligation
to serve the public. As a result the state placed constraints
upon them, such as the right to oversee the fares they
charged.

Necessity of service and
monopoly status were the
grounds for applying the public
interest doctrine.
In this country by the 1870s several states had created
regulatory commissions to oversee railroad rates and
related operations such as grain elevators. In a landmark
Supreme Court decision, Munn v. Illinois, 8 it was
acknowledged that states could regulate concerns "affected
with the public interest." Necessity of service and
monopoly status were the grounds for applying the public
interest doctrine. In addition the decision set monopoly of
a service "as the prime target of regulation." 9
Thus there came to be a nexus between monopoly and
regulation. Moreover in some markets it was thought that
substantial overhead costs would make it possible for only
one firm to operate at a profit; that is, cost conditions
would lead to a natural monopoly. Consequently where
monopoly appeared to be inevitable, a convenient

by WardS. Curran

rationalization existed for granting an exclusive franchise
to a supplier and for establishing a regulatory body to
prevent or minimize some of the perceived abuses of
monopoly, including the high level of prices and profits
and price discrimination among customers.
Thus it has been argued that railroads in the 19th
century were subject to overhead expenditures of such
magnitude (tracks, terminals, equipment, and the like) that
only a single line could economically serve most pairs of
cities. A similar argument could be made for the supply of
municipal water services. Moreover, subsequent development of the heavily capital intensive electric, gas, and
telephone utilities served to extend the scope of the natural
monopoly argument. Even if the monopoly was not
complete sometimes cost conditions precluded a large
number of firms from competing so that those firms
operating in markets with high overhead costs might be
perceived to have considerable if not complete monopoly
power.
Consequently, the first attempt at Federal regulation,
establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission in
1887, was an effort "to attack specific problems associated
with concentrated economic power;" 10 that is, to
regulate and control monopoly in the public interest. As a
general rule the state public utility commissions, established early in the 20th century, operated under the same
philosophy. In the context of the times monopoly was a
popular political issue. Regulation, as students of
American economic history know, was one response.
Antitrust was another. The general theme of the era was to
promote competition where possible and otherwise to
regulate and control those firms in industries where cost
conditions led inevitably to monopoly.
By the 1920s, however, the populist fervor that helped
to spawn the monopoly issue had waned, yet regulation
was on the threshold of expanding its mandate. Although
there were signs of change in the 1920s, the Great
Depression provided the necessary catalyst for rapid
expansion. As a result "affected with the public interest"
began to take on a wider connotation. By 1934 in Nebbia
v. New York, 11 the Supreme Court acknowledged that
virtually any industry could be deemed to be "affected
with the public interest" and hence subject to regulation.
Natural monopoly and necessity of service such as those
provided by public utilities were no longer necessary
conditions for regulation.
Furthermore, while the local electric or water
company may indeed supply a "necessary" service and
may tend towards natural monopoly, the latter concept
even when employed as a justification for regulation was
often overdrawn. For example, in the case of railroads it
has been shown that about the time of the inception of the
ICC, there were but a few cases of small-haul and
short-haul markets in which it could be said that the costs

of operation justified no more than a single railroad. 12 In
addition with the development of other forms of
transportation, particularly interstate trucking, there
arrived a new mode of competition for railroads. Since
government built the highways, by no stretch of the
imagination were the overhead costs of interstate trucking
so high as to warrant regulation as a natural monopoly.
Nevertheless, with encouragement from the railroads the
Motor Carrier Act of 1935 brought much of the trucking
industry under the jurisdiction of the ICC. The populist
fervor that helped spawn regulation was gone yet the
institution survived and prospered.

As regulation evolved it did so
for a variety of reasons often
unrelated to the problem of
controlling monopoly power.
Consequently, as regulation evolved it did so for a
variety of reasons often unrelated to the problem of
controlling monopoly power. Under the Communications
Act of 1934, for example, the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) was given no authority to regulate
prices and profits in broadcasting. Its sole function was
and is to allocate radio and subsequently television
frequencies in the public interest. When the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) was established, it was
given no authority over prices and profits. This
responsibility was given, although not initially, to the Civil
Aeronautics Board. Air traffic control, however, was and
is a major responsibility of the FAA.
Superimposed upon the problems of clarifying the
scope of regulation are the legal complexities of
overlapping jurisdictions between and among Federal and
state agencies. The Federal Power Commission may grant
licenses to electric utilities to build and maintain
hydroelectric facilities along rivers. At the same time the
rates charged and the profits earned may be subject only to
control of the state utility commission in the state in which
the company is domiciled. If, however, some of the
electricity generated is sold in interstate commerce, then
the rates charged for that portion of the electricity
marketed would again be subject to the jurisdiction of the
Federal Power Commission. Finally, if the utility was a
subsidiary of a holding company, the types and amounts
of securities issued by both the holding company and its
subsidiaries would be subject to the rules and regulations
of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under
authority granted it by Public Utility Holding Company
Act 1935.

11

The author was recently confronted with these facts in
preparing testimony as a financial witness in a case before
the Federal Power Commission. Briefly, the utility
involved had been called upon by environmental
organizations to construct a fishways to allow shad and
eventually salmon to move upstream along the Connecticut River. There appeared to be no dispute over the
obligation of the utility to construct such a facility,
although management wanted to delay construction
because it was experiencing, as were many utilities,
difficulties in obtaining funds for its program of plant
expansion .
Issues pertaining to the timing and building of the
fishways are subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal
Power Commission. While at this writing final decision on
a plan is still pending, it is likely that once built the
subsequent costs involved in maintaining and servicing the
facility will flow through to the consumers as rate
increases . The necessary rate increases, however, would
have to be granted by the state public utility commission.

regulatory process "a persistent tendency to make socially
undesirable policy, even if the agency is motivated to 'do
good' rather than to promote the regulated industry." 15
These two views of the regulatory process are not
necessarily incompatible with one another, although the
"capture hypothesis" is more specific as to the major
recipient of any redistribution while the latter need not be.
The real world, however, is far more complicated than
either view suggests.

It was fhought that with
regulation firms could protect
themselves from price
competition and from new
entrants into the industry.

Consider, for example, the regulation of airline fares
by the Civil Aeronautics Board. The CAB may be able to
control prices and profits so that consumers do not pay
fares that on balance would lead to what might be
perceived as excessive profits accruing to the shareholders
of airlines stocks. At the same time the structure of fares
could be set so that some routes between two cities are
highly profitable while others result in losses. In particular,
fares on short haul routes where 60 percent or less of the
seats are filled can and do fail to cover costs while those on
longer haul routes are generally profitable. The term
applied to this policy is cross-subsidization.16 It represents
a redistribution of income from those travelling a relatively
long distance on routes where most of the seats are filled,
perhaps distances of 500 miles p r more, to those taking
shorter trips on planes where most of the seats remain
empty. At the same time by controlling the amount of
service on the p rofitable routes (that is, by controlling entry into these markets) the CAB prevents price competition
among airlines; that is, it stabilizes to the benefit of the
industry the price of some airline services. In addition
cross-subsidization is a means by which the CAB can carry
out its statutory mandate to promote the development of
air transportation services. If left to their own devices
airlines would probably expand service in the long haul
markets while curtailing or eliminating it in many of the
short haul markets .
The CAB, therefore, might well be perceived as
balancing the collective interests of consumers in low fares
against the economic well-being of the airlines all within a
framework designed to promote airline travel. The major
beneficiaries of these policies would appear to be those
trunk airlines with a preponderance of long haul
schedules where the seats are usually filled and those
consumers who happen to confine most of their flying to
relatively short trips. Thus not all airlines or all consumers
stand to benefit from CAB policy.

Moreover , since the utility is a subsidiary of a holding
company the securities issued to finance the project must
conform to the rules and regulations of the Securities and
Exchange Commission . Without suggesting that this
specific case will run afoul of the diffusion of regulatory
activity, it is clear that overlapping jurisdictions may
complicate the resolution of a particular issue.
Finally, the ever-expanding scope and complexity of
regulation have in recent years led students of the subject
both to reassess the conventional thinking with respect to
its origins and to search for new hypotheses to explain or
predict regulatory behavior. With respect to the origins of
regulation, several writers have suggested that often the
desire to regulate monopoly, while politically popular,
may in reality have been a less important factor than the
desire of the industries involved to be regulated . Indeed it
was thought that with regulation firms could protect
themselves from price competition and from new entrants
in to the industry. This theme, particularly protection from
price competition, is what underlies some of the recent
literature on the origins of the ICC.l3 An extension of this
view leading to a hypothesis of regulatory behavior is that
the regulatory agency once established becomes the captive
of the regulated industry. The conservative economist
George Stigler perhaps best summarizes the essence of the
so-called "capture hypothesis" with the assertion that "as a
rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed
and operated primarily for its benefit." 14
Another view culled from the recent literature of
political economy (or in more modern terminology, "social
choice") is that regulatory behavior can often be explained
or predicted on the basis of its effect on the distribution of
wealth and income. Moreoever, there is inherent in the

12

If left to their own devices
airlines would probably expand
service in the long haul markets
while curtailing or eliminating it
in many of the short haul
markets.

III

The foregoing example serves as a point of departure
for illustrating some of the difficulties involved in
evaluating the performance of regulatory bodies . Agencies
often serve multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives.

Fortunately the CAB need only concern itself with the
development and promotion of air transportation. For the
ICC, under whose jurisdiction a number of modes of
transport fall, the task is more difficult. Thus Congress on
one occasion declared its belief that:
(1) an adequate national transportation system must
include the development of all modes of transport,
(2) regulation must be impartial, and (3) the inherent
advantages of each type of carrier shall be recognized
and preserved.17
Any regulatory agency, no matter how brilliant its staff or
commissioners, would fail to implement this set of
objectives. If it chose to be impartial and recognized the
inherent advantages of one type of transport over another,
the ICC would allow the lower cost suppliers through
price competition to attract whatever share of the market
they could.
Indeed, Professor Peck of Yale has estimated that
comprehensive rate deregulation would result in a 10
percent shift in freight revenues from barges and a similar
shift from trucks to railroads.18 Yet how would such a
policy fare in light of a mandate to develop all modes of
transport? Clearly it would not fare well. It should not
come as a surprise, therefore, that when railroads
introduced the concept of trailer on a flatcar or
piggybacking they were not allowed to do so in the most
efficient manner. Cost calculations suggested that as a rule
the lowest cost method of moving the cargo of a truck was
to design flatcars carrying only the containers built for one
truckload. ICC revenue requirements for flatcars, however, had the effect of forcing the railroad to charge twice
as much for a flatcar designed to carry one truck as for one
designed to carry two trucks. In addition, because flatcars
regardless of length, cannot have different prices for
containers than for whole trailers, the trucking industry
has no incentive to use containers, although the cost of
switching to containers would have been well worth the
savings in transport costs. 19
It is consumers, of course, and the agent for the lower
cost innovation, in this case the railroads, who bear the
burden. The former pay higher commodity prices resulting
from unnecessarily high transportation costs. The latter
lose revenues that might otherwise be used to offset the
overhead costs of what might otherwise be underutilized
transportation capacity. Considering the financial plight of
many railroads and the congestion on some highways a
shift in freight traffic to the former might have benefits in
addition to those accruing to consumers from lower
transport costs.

A change in regula tory policy
would affect more than those
who consume the products or
those who supply them.
Of course, increased rail carriage at the expense of
truck hauls would by definition mitigate traffic congestion
on the highways. In addition, rail carriage has the
possibility of being less energy consuming and less
polluting than at least trucks if not water carriers. At the
same time any substantial shift from one mode to another

has other costs. The increase in demand for personnel to
maintain and operate the rail system would be accompanied by a decrease in employment in the water carriage and
trucking industries. There is no guarantee that a transfer
out of one industry into the other would take place
smoothly. Indeed, severe personal dislocations are likely.
In our continuing contribution to the deterioration of
the English language, we economists lump the above
considerations under a single heading - externalities. By
this term we mean in the context employed that a change in
regulatory policy would affect more than those who
consume the products or those who supply them. Removal
of the ICC control over rates would have ramifications
beyond an immediate impact on prices paid by consumers
and profits earned by producers of transportation
services.

The President is as correct in
applying benefit-cost analysis to
health and safety proposals as he
is to rate reduction in the
transportation industries.
Recognition and measurement of the direct benefits
and costs as well as the externalities involved are the
essence of the modern approach to evaluating regulatory
policy. By employing what economists and others call a
benefit-cost framework, we have a quantitative basis for
judging the effectivenss of regulation. Where costs more
than marginally exceed benefits or where the ratio of
benefits to costs is less than one, a policy or set of
regulatory policies should be called into question.
We cannot, of course, gainsay that benefit-cost
measures are at best subject to margins of error. Consider,
for example, a recent estimate of the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) that regulation costs the country $130
billion per year or $2,000 per family. Representative Moss
of California criticized this estimate for, among other
things, failing to take into account the benefits of
government regulation. In particular, Moss argued that the
$40 to $60 billion estimate by the OMB of the annual costs
of maintaining environmental standards failed to subtract
the social costs of the pollution eliminated. 20
Criticism of the results, of course, is all to the good.
The contribution of quantitative studies to a discussion of
public policy is the fact that they draw critics to the
assumptions underlying the models used, to the quality of
the data employed, and the like. The appropriate
refinements should follow, leading to improved if not
"optimum" results. One can then employ his or her
judgment as to whether the best estimates available
warrant an alteration in public policy.
Criticism of the benefit-cost framework, however, is
in this writer's view unwarranted. Thus we would disagree
with Representative Moss who in response to a Ford speech
on regulation was quoted as saying that the "President's
statement indicates he is beguiled by so-called benefit-cost
ratios in evaluating public health and safety proposals." 21
On the contrary, the author would argue that the President
is as correct in applying benefit-cost analysis to health and
safety proposals as he is to rate reduction in the

13

transportation industries. It is possible that because the
externalities may be more important in the former, benefits
and costs may be more difficult to estimate and hence may
be subject to a wider margin of error. To the extent that
this is true the results are more tenuous but the analysis
remains intact.

It is the author's contention,
however, that all regulation
should come under scrutiny.
Nevertheless, the comment of Moss does indicate the
nature of what appears to be the substance of the political
debate over deregulation. As a general rule there is
widespread sympathy for economic deregulation; that is,
for loosening the grip of regulatory agencies over rates
charged, over entry into the industry, and so forth.
Nowhere is this sentiment, at least among students of the
subject, so pronounced as in the regulation of transportation. 22
On the other hand, when we turn to agencies or
policies concerned with safety, quality control, and other
measures associated with consumer protection; that is,
with consumer regulation , many want more rather than
less government intervention. Consumer advocate Ralph
Nader and his colleague Mark Green perhaps best express
this point of view:
A traveler can compare the prices of taking a plane or
bus between Washington and New York City, and arrive
at a choice without the need of a C.A .B. or an I. C. C. But
can consumers smell carbon monoxide seeping into a
car, detect that the drug they are giving their children is
mutagenic, or taste the cancerous pesticides that went
into the production of their food. 23
Moreover, to them regulatory price-fixing perpetuates a
cartel and hence is to the "profit of producers while
consumer regulation benefits consumers ."24
The difficulty with this view is that it appears to
subscribe to the "capture hypothesis" where economic
regulation is the chief concern but not where safety,
quality control and related matters are the major issue.
What prevents a regulatory agency from being "captured"
on one set of issues but not on another set?
The above criticism is not meant to disparage Mr.
Nader. He has made a distinct contribution to the public's
awareness of the frailties of the regulatory agencies,
something that students of the subject have failed to do. It
is the author's contention, however, that all regulation
should come under scrutiny. If areas exist where the
benefits of regulation exceed the costs - safety regulation
of surface and air transportation is such a possibility - the
results should come to the public's attention as should
those cases where costs exceed benefit's. Appropriate steps
may then be taken to retain, extend, or remove regulations
depending upon the outcome of the analysis .
Furthermore, to argue as some have that the nation
needs a consumers protection agency as "an institutionalized voice in the federal regulatory process to balance that
of industry," 25 is a remarkably naive notion. It suggests
first that there will be sufficient unanimity of opinion
among consumers to offset the "control" firms in the
industry exercise over the regulatory agencies involved and

14

second that consumer opinion would reflect the long run
interests of the country. The author can conceive of cases
where representatives of consumers might approach
unanimity but possibly at the expense of the longer run
interests of themselves and the nation.
Consider regulation of natural gas at the well head,
a relatively recent phenomenon said by the U.S. Supreme
Court in the 1950s to be a responsibility of the Federal
Power Commission under the Natural Gas Act of 1938.
After some experimenting, the FPC established in 1965 a
"two tier" price system that resulted in a lower price
for "old gas" than for new gas. "The purpose of setting a
lower ceiling on 'old gas' already committed to the
interstate markets is to transfer income from producers to
consumers ." 26

What started as an attempt to
assist cGnsumers has helped to
stimulate a shortage of a basic
source of energy.
New gas, however, soon becomes "old gas" as the FPC
moves the cutoff date forward in time. Natural gas
producers, therefore, must assume that the price they
negotiate in an interstate contract will only rise as the FPC
allows the price of "old gas" to rise. Currently the rate for
old gas moving in interstate commerce is 23lfz cents per
1000 cubic feet with a scheduled rise in July 1976 to 29 lfz
cents per 1000 cubic feet. Pipelines selling the gas within
the state where it is produced are, of course, not subject to
FPC controls. Prices for intrastate gas have ranged from $1
to $2 per 1000 cubic feet. 27 Meanwhile the costs of
exploration and development have not escaped the general
inflationary trend we have experienced in recent years. At
the same time rates on "old gas" remain lower than they
would otherwise be in an unfettered market. Given these
facts we can expect that producers will not search as
extensively for new gas, will not negotiate long term
contracts for its delivery, and will keep as much gas as
possible o'ut of interstate commerce.
Basic economic analysis and more elaborate "econometric" models have borne out these expectations . As a
result we face an acute shortage of natural gas that can best
be alleviated by elimination of FPC controls at the well
head. 28 As of this writing legislation to do so was still
pending in Congress. If there were a consumer advocacy
agency one suspects that it would be arguing in favor of
retention of controls. It would be doing so in spite of the
fact that only those few consumers still under long term
contracts for "old" gas would be enjoying the benefits.
Others sooner or later will experience shortages or be
forced to use higher priced substitutes. Thus what started
as an attempt to assist consumers has helped to stimulate a
shortage of a basic source of energy .
IV

The political debate over more or less regulation is
often couched in generalities. Thus regulation is denounced
by some as "government intervention in the free market"
and praised by others as protection for the consumer and
in some cases the small businessman or farmer against the
corporate giants . Below the superficial rhetoric that

surrounds the debate lies what is perhaps a truly
ambivalent attitude toward regulation. On the one hand
President Ford can appeal to a b asic disenchantment with
the institution, the bureaucracies that underlie it, the
complex and often arcane pronouncements that come from
these bureaucracies, and above all the lack of visible
benefits to the public. At the same time there is the nagging
fear that without these bureaucracies the quality or safety
of many of the products and services we consume would
deteriorate. Moreover, there is widespread appeal in the
notion that regulatory agencies staffed with "honest" men
and women are capable of preventing large corporations
from abusing the public; that is, from profiting at the
expense of the public.
Perhaps because of this ambivalence there seems to be
no widespread popular consensus to press for deregulation
on a broad front. As a result substantive changes that do
occur will come about on a piecemeal basis.
On occasion, a combination of circumstances does
work to promote a measure of deregulation. In May, 1975
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) presided
over the demise of the fixed commission rate structure in
the brokerage industry, a practice that had been
perpetuated by the New York Stock Exchange since its
inception in 1792 . While the author has developed
elsewhere the reasons for ending the system, 29 suffice it
to say that its breakdown was due more to structural

changes in the market for brokerages services, particularly
the shift from individual to institutional investors, than to
the SEC. Conceived in 1934 the primary function of the
SEC was to oversee legislation designed to prevent fraud
and manipulation in the issuance of and trading in
securities. Consequently it acquiesced in the system of
brokerage commissions until market forces, combined
with encouragement from Congress and the courts, caused
it to promote competitively determined brokerage rates .
Perhaps a different set of circumstances, most likely
dislocations resulting from a severe shortage of natural
gas, will bring about price competition in that industry .
This piecemeal approach to deregulation is in the author's
view unfortunate, although given the ambivalence of the
body politic toward regulatory agencies, it is understandable. Nevertheless, it may be worthwhile to continue to
press for greater freedom from regulatory constraints.
Even if the net loss of regulation turned out to be only 50
percent of the original OMB figure, we would still
conclude that $1,000 per family is not an insignificant sum.

Dr. Ward S. Curran , .Class of 1957, is professor of
econo mics and the George M. Ferris Lecturer in
Corporation Finance and Investments. He has been a
member of the faculty since 1960.

15

Profile of an Artist: Richard Tuttle
by ]alene Goldenthal

Art, as we know it today, is in a state of flux, pushed
backward and thrust forward by conflicting multiple
urges . Young artists are seeking, as artists historically have
sought, more personal forms of expression. One of the
most quietly powerful agents for change has been Richard
Tuttle, Trinity '63, who emerged swiftly onto the world art
scene just two years following his graduation from Trinity.
Tuttle's work , which has been labeled "Minimal," is
deceptively simple, so simple that it has aroused enormous
controversy. His important one-man show at the Whitney
Museum of American Art last fall , characterized by the
museum as "a major examination of his work," stimulated
fiery discussion and a barrage of loudly conflicting critical
opinion.
Richard Tuttle and I were, briefly, fellow students at
Trinity . In the spring term of 1963, Dick's senior year,
Stephen Minot offered a course in Advanced Literary
Writing (English 502), which was open to both undergraduate and graduate students. That course was my
introduction to Trinity and to Dick, whom I remember as a
bright, perceptive, deeply honest young man.
The Whitney show was in its final weeks when Milli
Silvestri, assistant editor of this magazine, and I journeyed
to New York to see it. She arranged an interview with
Dick who met us at the museum. We saw the show, and
then,' all through a dark and rainy afternoon, we sat in the
small restaurant at the Whitney and talked, and ate, and
talked some more.
Upstairs, people came and went to see the final
portion of his three-part show, hanging on the entire
second floor of the museum . Challenged, entranced,
baffled, mystified, they wandered in and out, while
downstairs, still, we talked.
"An exhibition in a gallery is an exhibition in a
gallery," Dick mused. "Whatever it is I'm dreaming of, it's
not this."
His first gallery show was at the Betty Parsons Gallery
in 1965. In a nice continuum, some of the work from that
show, the first pieces that he made in New York, were
included in the Whitney exhibit. These are a series of small
paper cubes, simple lightweight forms, architectural in
concept, each with a varied opening.
All of his work since then has come out of these
pieces, he feels . Everything since then "has been about the
inside of the cube looking out." They were a breakthrough
for him, a way of "finding one's voice" which he compared
to "that heart beating a little faster that happened in Steve's
class ... the sensation of getting close to something."

16

At Trinity, Dick was a fine arts major, and editor, in
his junior year, of a highly controversial issue of the Ivy.
He had been a student member of the committee for the
yet-to-be-built Austin Arts Center, and had designed a
cover and illustrations for the Cesare Barbieri Courier.
But, simultaneously, he had been waiting, marking time,
to do what he had longed to do since childhood: go to art
school.
Immediately upon graduation, he applied to tuitionfree Cooper Union in New York, a school so highly
competitive that 5000 students apply annually. Dick was
rejected and, ironically, received word that his entrance
scores had been the highest in the school's history .
Tuttle was working at that time for Albert Holland,
vice president in charge of development at Trinity. Greatly
discouraged, he told Holland of his rejection. Holland
phoned Cooper Union and they reversed the earlier
decision.
Dreams, long sought, often have a way of going awry,
and Tuttle's dream of art school shortly did just that. After
one semester and two weeks of the next, he left art school.
'Td been 'waiting my lifetime for this," he said. "But we
found each other mutually incompatible. By then I'd begun
getting very much interested in my own work. Then I
began to realize that they weren't interested."
Dick left school and enlisted in the Air Force. He
wanted to be a pilot, seeing this as "an image for
independence. " "When one is 20 or 21, one is very much
involved with the urgent thing of putting together a legend
for oneself," he explained with a smile.
Tuttle's Air Force career lasted only six weeks. But
when he got out a fortuitous event set his career in art in
motion. Jobless, he went to a museum opening, met the
then director of the Betty Parsons Gallery, Jock Truman,
and heard him say that the gallery needed somebody to
work part time. Dick asked, "What about me? ': and was
hired.
Dick began working afternoons as a "gallery
assistant" (a euphemism for broom pusher, he says), using
the free morning hours to create his own pieces. "It was a
terrific job, " he remembers. "Lots of terrific artists. It was
an atmosphere that felt encouraging to do what I wanted to
do. "
He made the Paper Cubes, mentioned earlier, in 1964
at the gallery, and they now belong to Betty Parsons, who
keeps them near her desk. They were included in his first
show, in 1965 at the gallery. "The kick (about them) was
finding a format," Dick explained. "The cube became the
vehicle. The difficult thing about them is that they are
about weight. It mattered to me that they were so light.
Like air."
This quality of lightness ranks high in any
consideration of Tuttle's work. It has been labelled
"Minimal," but mi~imal is a harsh word and, I think, a
misnomer. It connotes the heavy and severe type of metal
sculpture that Donald Judd was doing in the 60's. Tuttle's
work is in basic opposition to that kind of formal
minimalism. He deliberately selects lightweight materials,
paper, cloth, and tin, or materials with a certain amount of
available elasticity, like soft string or fine wire.

At times the work relates to photography, with
emphasis on light and shadow. The curve formed by the
shadow of a wire in some of his work is, for him, an
integral planned part of the piece. Totally, of course, it is a
changing work, for shadows shift with light mutations . But
room for change and spontaneity are what he seeks.
Letting things happen, catching and holding the spontaneity of the moment is of prime importance to Tuttle.
Tuttle works quickly, by choice. But he adds that
some of his work, such as the Paper Octagonals, set up a
"paradox of spending hours of time in preparation and
then the actual work may take two minutes." Normally,
though , he feels that "the longer I take, the more chance
there is for errors to enter or dominate."
Deliberate spontaneity delights him. "I can't work any
old time. It just happens, it happens fast. Whether or not
the work is the preparation or the time is, I don't know and
I can't know."
路
For me, the essence of Tuttle's art can be expressed in
two words: simplicity and spontaneity. Everything that he
makes clearly demonstrates a striving for these twin goals.
Striving, because in order to achieve simplicity today, the
artist is forced to peel back layers of habit , convention,
and regulation, and to substitute for these self-discovery,
and more important, a sense of newness, of beginning
again.
That is, I think, what Tuttle means when he speaks of
children's art, "little kids' art." Ideally, a child comes fresh
and new to drawing, takes a crayon and marks with
excitement and with delight, on paper, on cloth, on walls,
on anything.

Tuttle's own wall drawings are done directly on large
open areas of museum wall space. He draws these himself
for a particular exhibit, and they have been done for shows
in Dallas (at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts), in Hartford
(at MATRIX in the Wadsworth Atheneum) and at the
Whitney. These are transitory images drawn directly on
the walls and, by plan, painted over, erased, when the
exhibit is over.
It is fascinating to consider the contradictory impulses
at work here , the sense of spontaneity and, working in
direct opposition, the necessity to capture, permanently,
the fleeting image.
His sketch for a wall drawing done in Dallas in 1971
was included in the Whitney show. Tuttle analysed it as "a
very simple thing. You start with a unit, drop it around,
move the point, drop it again. It can be any size and in any
place. The work is just about the invention of a scheme."
All true. Yet the philosophical implications hidden in
the warring images of a permanent drawing and a
transitory wall sketch of the same work, will not
disappear, even as we recognize that spontaneity is a
function of the creative portion of the work. Completed,
the urge to keep and to record takes over.
Books, of course, are the perfect vehicle for keeping
and recording, and Tuttle is captivated by the making of
books. Characteristically, his are small edition arrange-

17

ments of hand drawn sheets of line drawings, done on a
litho die cut background. They have been shown in some
of his museum exhibits, most recently at MATRIX, where
his book "Interlude" was exhibited together with a large
wall drawing and a group of drawings on paper, all of
which related to the line images of the book.
Tuttle is charmed by oblique philosophical statement.
His definition of that book: "The book was about the
ability to tear out the page and have prints."
Question: "Is it a book or prints?"
Answer: "It's finally an object."
Enormous emphasis has been placed on every
statement that Tuttle makes about his work . A good deal,
for example, has been said about Tuttle's insistence on
"gesture." He has been quoted as placing great importance
on hand and arm movements, and on the magic of these,
together, achieving a line on paper. But these statements,
read, continued to puzzle me, until I was able to ask him,
finally, why this emphasis on what was essentially a matter
of basic physical coordination?
"Gesture, " it seems, is based on a marvelous child's
memory of watching his grandfather draw, the arm and
the hand reaching out and, miraculously, on the paper, a
resultant clear and definite line. Dick was only about four
years old, he told me, when this happened. He was totally
fascinated by that mind-to-hand observation, the idea of
thinking through what was wanted and then willing the
hand to execute it. It is this simple and powerful childhood
memory that today emphasizes, for him, the importance of
"gesture."
Tuttle's is a purposefully spare art, focusing on the
slightest image, the shadow of that image, a miniscule shift
or change. In the positive sense, his attitude towards his
work takes us back to the beginnings of art, stripping away
almost everything that has been accomplished to force a
new beginning.
He has abandoned that which has become too
familiar, overly used, to begin again, as a child begins . The
philosophy of newness, of beginning again, is inescapable
in any serious consideration of his work: "We've gone as
far as we can go, become as practiced and sophisticated as
we can be, we've reached the end of that road and now it's
time to turn back, to begin again ."
His work is difficult primarily because it is so
amazingly simple. With that simplicity, everytl;ling
extraneous is stripped away . Images are honed down to an
outline or a fine line, a shadow of that line, or a
combination of the two.
To me, Tuttle's work reflects an essentially Oriental
attitude, one that, ideally, erases or sacrifices the
non-essentials, even destroys them, to emphasize the
nuances, the subtleties, the small touch of rightness. Yet,
until I was able to ask him directly, I never realized how
acute his feelings for the Orient actually are.

18

"I've always been attracted to the Orient, without
really knowing why," he told me. "I've generally been
uncomfortable in America. The first time that I went to
Japan I felt that I was home."
Tuttle's first trip to Japan was in the Summer of 1968,
a time of assassination and conflict in this country . He had
made "a major breakthrough" in his work (constructing
cloth pieces) and "felt entirely drained. I remember in the
spring of that year there was a lunar eclipse. I felt that the
future didn't bode well. I intended to stay in Japan for a
year, to live in the mountains. When I went, I lived in a
town, just long enough to learn enough language so that I
could go into the mountains. If there is anything to
reincarnation, I suspect that in my last life, I lived in Japan.
I'm really homesick for the Orient .... "
Tuttle, at 34, has been extremely influential,
particularly among young artists . His stripped-down
work, sparse use of ordinary materials, pieces that might
once have been considered studies for more elaborate
works, have made a definite mark on the current art scene .
His W()rk has been shown and collected in locations as
diverse as.Paris, Milan, Ireland, Los Angeles, Dallas and
New York. Whether he has sought it or not (and I think
not) he is a leader.
He once rejected the importance of "success, fame,
future " for a life of art, and has now achieved those same
unsought goals . But he is as perceptive and as honest as he
was at 20, and the irony of this has not escaped him.
"Close friends have said I've changed . I've lost something
with this show (at the Whitney) . There are certain
moments that you have to lose something to gain
something . And maybe what you've gained may not be as
precious as what you've lost. I do feel in my life at this
point that the more success I have in terms of my art
career, the more I fail in terms of what I really want. I don't
think we ever get to know what it is we really want , We do
have insights from time to time. If I said 'peace of mind'
that's not just it. One goes through life trying to
understand .... "

FISH THE EDGES OF THE DEEP
i do not want it and
i do not need it and
if it were to visit me i
would walk right out on it
in the background of
this a man speaks to his
wife he is saying i
want you to leave me
i can never leave you
please leave me i could .
never leave you i have
never loved you fish the
edges of the deep i
mean let it slide
along the walls of that
channel which flows through
the center or you might
hide in shallows or
some earlier drop-off
(not unlike skipping a beat)
one is altered as
one proceeds a small handpainted japanese will take
your coat at the door
you are there
my first big glove
i miss you baby i
miss you come live
with me my wife will
like you too
(is this itself a fish? asked
little nemo. no, says me, it
is certainly looser than that)

CHEMOTAXIS
(for Tom Ingolia)

i say
your gravity bores me
your scrutiny the piercing
eyes these are the worst
my friend you are
mean with me because you
are stuck with self-assertion
and independence and if
our friendship went
unchecked we would grow to
love each other in some
kinky
defenseless way
lets dance

TO HIS LOVER
here he is this he
he is waiting and he is
restless
on the way to his shop
he listens
for the footsteps behind

i mean i
am drawn to you there are statistics i am a
young man america is a young country i am
a priest a vegetarian i wish
someday to visit kansas
i am drawn away from you you are my food
enigma sets
in america grows old my manhood falters
loose ends
once treasured
are beyond my reach i am complete
god forbid and
simple
this is a year for passion this is a year
for triumph
there is unqualified terror in your face
you see i win0 away from myself
this is the one natural act
a very tall man leans interested towards
a very tall woman the sight both fascinates
and pleases me as they form an angle of
sixty degrees
i am drawn to you i am leaning towards you
i live here i said
so do i you replied with conviction

the brush of leaf which
marks his path
above
the quiet and more interesting
ways of
getting along
he is rattled vexed by
light and
uninsured there is no
harsh sound which distracts him
he feels himself alone he says
"something has emptied itself
of me"
he likes you you
encourage him and he.likes
that you comfort him
he told me

Stephen Thomas, a member of the Class of 1976,
has been named a Watson Fellow.

19

Old Sing-Song Rhythms
by Meredith Adler

I hang up the phone slowly. She is dead, I tell myself.
Fay's mother is dead. Thank God.
My wife calls from the bedroom. "Who was that on
the phone?"
I walk up the stairs and into the bedroom. "It was the
nursing home, Fay. Your mother is dead." She cries softly,
her head in my arms, the dye of her brown hair leaving
smudges on my white t-shirt. The alarm clock rings and
Fay jumps. She leans back against the headboard and tells
me not to wake the girls. She wants to tell them herself, but
not quite yet. I want to tell Fay that it's for the best. We're
just a family now. She wouldn't understand.
The stairs would creak, Mother's head come around
the corner. "So Fay, what's new?" She would say. Her
stockings are rolled around rubber garters, and full of tiny
runs sewed closed with white thread. "So Fay, what's
new?"
"Nothing, Mother," Fay would say.
"So you just don't want to tell me . I understand. So
you just don't want to tell me. That's fine." Her garters
would gradually fall to the top of her knees and her
stockings would bag. "Okay, I understand," she would
say, climbing back up the stairs to her room. "I
understand."
"Len," Fay says, "I have to call my sister. "
"Do you want me to make the calls?" I say.
"No, she's my sister. "
"Yes, I say. Fay wraps her hand around mine as we
walk down the stairs and into the kitchen. Her hand is
clammy and I pull my hand tight, hoping that it will slip
out of her grasp. Slowly, she takes a breath and begins to
dial. Half way through dialing the number, she hangs up
the phone. "Damn," she says, "Wrong number. I just can't
think straight." Fay takes another breath, wipes her hands
against the material of her bright yellow bathrobe and
walks to the stove. "Do you want some tea?" she says.
"No," I say.
*

*

*

"Shad," Mary says to her crying baby, "Bela shad."
The baby does not understand. Mary sighs. The New York
skies are grey. It is October, maybe November, she cannot
remember. The steamship trip was long, her daughter sick

20

and frightened; maybe it has been three weeks since they
left Budapest. Maybe it has been three weeks. "Freida," she
says to her daughter, "Stand straight, I'm too tired for you
to lean on."
Mary would have liked a house in Budda, where the
Danube is blue and the people have money. Her home is,
no was, in Pest, of the mud river and narrow streets.
"Budapest," she says to an official who fills out
immigration forms. He nods. I am Mary, she thinks, come
with children to declare a new home. She laughs.
"Shad Momma ," Freida says, "Shad ."
The official points to Bela. "Birthday?" he says.
"Hot, " Mary says.
"Birthday, " the official says.
"Hot , holiday," Mary says.
July Fourth, the official writes. "Name," he says.
"Bela," Mary says .
Bella, the official writes, female. Bela is a boy.
"Mary, " a tall thin dark-haired man calls, "Mary."
'.'So Ruben ," she says, "We are all here now." Freida
jumps on路 her father , he spins her around, puts her down ,
kissing her head.
"It is going to be good, " he says, "You will see, Mary,
you will see ."
"I am tired, Ruben ," Mary says, "You carry Bela and
take the bag from Freida before she drops it."
"This is all you brought?" Ruben says.
"You expected maybe we should carry a bed, a
couch?" Mary says.
"No," Ruben says, "Maybe you should sit on that
bench and rest a minute . Look someone is getting up, there
is room."
"Yes," Mary says.
"It was a hard trip? " Ruben says .
"Freida was a little bit sick. No, Freida?" Mary says.
"I don't like the boat, " Freida says. Mary and Ruben
laugh.
"So Ruben," Mary says, "What is home?' '
*

*

*

Fay fills the kettle and turns on the burner. I put a
teabag in a cup and hand the cup to Fay .
'Thank you, " she says. Fay puts the cup on the
counter and walks back to the phone. Her fingers tremble
as she dials. I hear the phone ring in her ear . Seven rings,
then Sonya answers.
"Sonya, this is Fay," Fay begins to cry, "Sonya,
Momma's dead ." Fay is sobbing, I take the phone from
her.
"I told you not to put her in that Home." Sonya's
voice is deep , her accent is slight, definite traces of
Mother's tones.
"Sonya, Mother's dead, " I say.
"I didn't have the room for her. You shouldn't have
put her in that Home. You had the room ."
"Sonya, Momma's dead ," I whisper.
"I know. She was sick. The home didn't make any
difference. She would have died anyway . I know. She's
dead." Sonya says.

The tea kettle rings loudly. I tell Sonya that Fay needs
me. She says that she will come over, later this morning. I
say fine, she hangs up.
Fay is sitting at the kitchen table, crying still, loudly in
big sobs and then in little whimpers. I hear the girls
walking down the stairs.
"How come you're not at the office? I thought you had
an early appointment this morning." Alison says. Her
upper lip is already twitching, her eyes full with tears.
"What's wrong?" Barbara says and starts to chew on a
piece of her dark hair.
"Take the hair out of your mouth," Fay says.
"What's wrong?" Barbara says.
"Grandma's dead," I say.
"Grandma's dead?" Alison says.
"When did you find out?" Alison says.
"Early this morning. Your father answered the call,"
Fay says.
"Why didn't you wake me?" Alison looks angry.
"You needed your sleep," Fay says.
"How did it happen? " Alison says.
"In her sleep," Fay says.
"Grandma's really dead?" Alison asks.
"Thank God," I say.
"What?" Fay says.
"Thank God she didn't suffer," I say. They all cry.
*

*

The apartment is cold, when Mary wakes up. Next to
her, Ruben is snoring. Across the room, Freida and Bela
are completely hidden by their blankets. Mary gets out of
bed quietly and runs over the cold floor, into the
bathroom. She looks into the bathroom mirror. Nose,
eyes, ears, mouth, every part accounted for. She smiles
slowly, her long face gathering new fullness, prettiness,
and then she lets go. Her face drops, the tears fall. How old
am I? She thinks . She smiles again, drops the smile, smiles
again, drops the smile, smiles again and drops the smile.
She thinks that she will go crazy if she can't decide her age.
Finally, there are no more tears. I am thirty and ninety, she
decides and turns away. The baby is crying.
Carefully, she gathers him into her arms and carries
him through the bathroom to the kitchen. Mary lights the
stove and then sits, rocking him slowly back and forth.
"Yes, yes, I know you are cold. It will be warm soon.
Come, stop crying. Look, Bela, see the sun, soon it will be
bright. Do you think it will snow today? Maybe Freida will
stay home from school and build a snowman tor you.
Maybe your father won't go to and it will be too cold for
the neighbors to bring us their dirty laundry. We can all sit
in the kitchen, together, and I'll make a good soup. Come,
Bela stop crying," Mary says. He doesn't stop. "So keep
crying," she says.
She struggles to give the baby her love. But the
memory of his birth is still aching in her. The feel of his soft
head, in her arms, reminds her of the night of his birth.
Ruben goes for a doctor, a friend of a friend of a friend's
brother. The doctor is at a party. He walks into their
room, smiling and joking; he is drunk. Bela is delivered on

the kitchen table. The doctor's forceps hit the baby's eye.
For a long time, the eye is swollen . Then it opens, sees, but
is large and misshapen. "Bela, sleep," Mary says, "Close
the eyes." This is Ruben's son, Mary thinks, putting a hand
on its little neck and squeezing. "So this is the way it will
be," Mary says, "My monster, my monster." Now the
baby is sleeping and smiling.
.
"So there you are, " Ruben says, as he walks into the
kitchen.
"Where should I be?" Mary says.
"What a good mood, you're in. Go tell Freida to get
out of bed, she shouldn't be late for school," he says.
"Here, take your son," Mary says.
*

*

*

I say that I think it would be a good idea to clean
Mother's room. Fay stares at me and looks surprised, but
when I explain that the longer we wait, the harder it will
be, she nods. I tell the girls that now they will each have a
room of their own. Barbara says that she would be afraid
to live in Mother's room. I say that after we clean it out,
she will feel differently. We walk up the stairs and down
the hall into Mother's room, like a little army.
A picture of a strong fat woman hangs over Mother's
bed. The picture is of Mother; she wears black velvet in a
high collar with white lace. Fay says that she thinks she
should get some boxes to store anything we want to save.
Yes, I say that's a good idea. The girls just stare at Mother's
bed . I walk to the window and look out over the driveway
and the front door. Best damn view in the entire house .
"Fay," Mother would yell, "Fay answer the door. It's
the paperboy."
"The doorbell didn't ring, Mother," Fay would yell
back.
"Any minute. Any minute. He just put his bicycle in
the driveway. He just got off his bicycle. He's walking up
towards the door. Any minute. Any minute." The doorbell
would ring. "I was right, wasn't I?" Mother would call
down to Fay and the paperboy.
"Yes, Mother, you were right," Fay would call back as
she paid the paperboy.
Fay takes a blanket cover off of Mother's old red quilt.
The quilt is stained and full of small holes. Its red rose
pattern has all but disappeared. The doorbell rings. We all
stare at each other, afraid to answer the door. Fay looks
out the window and sees her sister. "Do you want me to
answer the door?" I say.
Fay does not answer, instead she walks back to the
bed and folds the quilt. The doorbell rings agai~. "Do you
want me to answer the door?" I say.
'This quilt is absolutely filthy," Fay says, 'Tm going
to have it cleaned. I mean you just can't store something in
this condition." The doorbell rings for a third time.

21

"Don't you think we should answer the door and let
your sister in?" I say.
"Yes, I guess we should," she says. I follow Fay to the
front door. She turns the knob so slowly that I want to
grab it out of her hand and pull the door open. This feeling
lasts only the few minutes it takes for Sonya to walk into
my house. "Len, you know I started to think that no one
was home," Sonya says. She is shorter than Fay and wears
a green woolen suit. Her face is covered with tiny sweat
beads from the ho t August sun. She looks like Mother.
Sonya walks toward me and kisses my cheek. She is
not Mother, I tell myself. Sonya is not Mother. But she
looks like Mother and she talks like Mother and I back
away from her. Sonya comes to Mother's room . She sits on
the bed and stares at the portrait. I stare at the portrait and
it stares back at me . I want to blacken the teeth, cross the
eyes and draw a moustache over Mother's red lips.
Alison finds Mother's jewelry box in one of the night
table drawers. She fingers the rhinestones as a five year old
would finger them, thinking they are diamonds. Barbara
puts her hand inside the jewelry box and pulls out a huge
pin that looks like a green jello bubble. "Ohhh," she says,
"Look at this. Isn't it beautiful?" No one answers. Sonya
leaves the quilt and comes to look at the green pin.
"You can hold it," Barbara says.
Sonya takes the pin and rubs it around in the palm of
her hand. Her hands are sweating and as she rubs the pin it
slips to the floor, the stone not falling out , just cracking in
its setting. Green rhinestone mash. Barbara bends down
and picks up the pin. She puts it on the night table and
finds another piece of jewelry to look at. Fay pulls the
jewelry box over to her side of the bed. A long string of
fake pearls with a silver clasp with smaller fake pearls is
her find.
"I bought these at the beauty parlour boutique," Fay
says.
"They're beautiful, Mother," Alison says.
'They look beautiful on you, Mother, " Fay said.
"So once in a while, you do think of me, " Mother
said.
"They look real and did you see the clasp? Silver." Fay
smiles. Her newly styled hair seeming like an extension of
her mouth, turned up just the right amount, lacquered at
the edges.
"Silver? Thank you, Fay. Now you're the one buying
me presents. Now you're the one taking care of me , Fay.
Thank you." Mother put the pearls around her neck. They
hung against her black and white checkered housedress,
with ketchup on the sleeve.
Fay is looking guilty now. Silver? No plastic. Dimestore plastic. She puts the pearls back in the box. Alison
finds a dried flower in an envelope. There is a bug crawling
on it. She drops the flower and jumps back.
*

"So Ruben," Mary says, "If the sister can't help in the
laundry she will make hats. We have enough money, there
is a room upstairs for rent. She can live there with Freida.
There is no problem." Mary rubs her hands together. Her
skin is dry and wrinkled from washing in the basins all
day.
'Then you don 't mind my sister staying with us?"
Ruben says.
"Where else can she go? Don't worry, " Mary says,
"Look at these hands, Ruben . Not pretty. Can you
remember them being soft?"
"They are beautiful hands," Ruben says .
"Help me fold the laundry," Mary says.
"Where is Freida, why she can' t help you?" he says.
"She's not back from school, yet," Mary says.
"Two blocks she has to walk and it takes her two
days," Ruben says.
"Shad. She is a good girl ," Mary says, "So, the sister
comes soon?"
"Tomorrow, " he says .
"Goo'd," Mary says.
"What are those bells?" Ruben says.
"That is Santa Claus," Mary says.
"And all day you have to listen to that?" he says.
"Most of the time I am too busy to hear, " she says,
"Freida thinks that she would like a Christmas tree ."
"So what you tell her? " Ruben says.
"That you wouldn't like that idea," Mary says.
In the street, Salvation Army Santa Clauses sit ringing
bells at folding tables, next to the larger shops. Next to
them pretzel venders sell hot salted pretzels for a nickel.
"And what do you want for Christmas?" A Salvation
Army Santa Claus asks as Freida puts a dime in his drum.
"We don't have Christmas, " Freida says.
"No?" the Santa Claus says.
"We're Jewish, " Freida says.
'Tm sorry," the Santa Claus says.
Freida hurries into her mother's laundry shop.
"Freida, we are taking the room upstairs," Mary says,
"Your aunt is coming to live with us. "
"Another room , are we rich?" Freida says.
"We have enough to share," Ruben says.
"You're going to move upstairs," Mary says, "Now
come, help me fold this laundry. "
'Tm hungry," Freida says.
"Fold the laundry," Ruben says .
"Yes," Freida says, "later can we make some of those
pretty cookies?"
"Christmas cookies?" Ruben says .
"Yes," Freida says.
"Your mother is too tired to bother with such things,"
he says .
"Can I do it alone?" Freida says.
"No , but you can help your mother fold the laundry,"
Ruben says.
*

*

Sonya walks to the window and stares outside. "The
paperboy just delivered your paper," she says. .

22

"Oh," I say. I open the closet and start piling clothes
onto the bed. Sonya stares at them. The clothes are mainly
suits in dark colors, black, navy blue, a dull gray and old
housedresses with frayed edges and safety pins in the
pockets. In the back corner, on the floor of the closet are a
pair of rubber garters. I pick them up, think about
shooting them at Sonya, and decide to put them in my
pocket instead. We spend most of the afternoon folding
clothes.
In the pocket of the brown tweed winter coat, I find a
copper Jewish star. Somehow, the feel of coat and the star
combined cause memories of Friday nights in a
Williamsburg Brooklyn Shu! to surface. I remember
praying with my father in the back of a cigar store,
memorizing strange Hebrew words and prayer movements.
The whining tone of the men around me would fill my
blood and make me want to scream. And yet, all around
old men stood peaceful, sing-songing their troubles away,
talking to a God that didn't help them . "It will be good,"
they said, "It will be good." Sometimes I go back. The old
men are dead. Plaques on the walls have their names
engraved upon them, and next to their names memorial
lights blink on and off in that old sing-song rhythm.
*

*

*

The laundry business is slow, these days. Mary tries to
spend as much time as she can with Bela. He goes to school
now, but usually comes home crying. The children laugh
a t his eye. Some boys down the street beat him and call
him "Jew ." When Mary cannot find time to be with Bela,
she leaves him with the crippled aunt.
The aunt is good with Bela. They sit for long hours in
the kitchen, making hats to the noise of the kettle, always
boiling. Bela helps the aun t paste ribbons on the hats .
Sometimes he delivers the hats ' to the neighbors and
collects the money. With buttons, he pastes faces onto the
hats with broad rims. Inside these hats, he sews his name,
in red thread and large clumsy stitches. Bela makes a large
bright red hat for Mary, sewing the words, 'Love, Bela,' on
the inside edge.
Late that night she receives Bela's gift, Mary stares at
the hat as she scrubs the coal stove clean and polishes it till
it shines. The bright color of the hat, reflected off of the
kitchen table and onto the stove reminds her of the bright
embroidered clothes of the people of Pest. She cries as she
sees familiar, laughing faces of her former neighbors and
lost friends. Then she sees her own face, as it was, and as it
is, wrinkled and rough and takes a deep breath, thinking of
Ruben's words, "It wil.l be good."
How old was I in 1897? Mary wonders. Twenty-five,
she decides. Young, fat, strong, powerful hands, proud.
Now, I have the hands of a washed out laundry lady, Mary
thinks, hard and rough. She rubs the back of one hand
against her face. "This is what I am," she says, 'This is
what I am." "It will be good," Ruben had said before they
left Budapest. His plumbing store bankrupt, a financial
panic causing the clicking of tongues and the shaking of
heads, "America," Ruben says. So he goes, finds a job, in a
hardware store, a home in Brooklyn and Mary follows.
"We are luckier than most," she says.
Mary rubs her hands together and thinks of the
bundles of strangers' dirty laundry that she will have to

wash in the morning; she cannot smile at her luck. In the
reflection on her stove, Mary can count the times she has
been happy. She sees Freida, reading to her and the aunt,
after the dinner dishes are washed, dried and put away.
Not really ever listening to the words of Freida's books,
Mary en joys the quiet and a sense of closeness, almost
more than sleep. She sees the Sunday afternoon visits to
her wealthy Uncle Abe and Aunt Bessie on Park Avenue.
Uncle Abe, who gives Freida and Bela shiny silver dimes.
Freida, saving the dimes, in a little bag, tying the bag to her
b edpost each Sunday night; feeling rich. Mary also sees the
bathtub, bought late last summer, kept in the kitchen, a
sign of a family on the rise. Happiness? Mary cries harder.
Freida runs into the kitchen and hugs Mary from
behind. "What is the matter?" Mary says.
"I am afraid of the aunt," Freida says.
"She doesn't bite," Mary says.
"I wake up from a dream and see her hardly
breathing. I think that she is dead. I lean over her to feel for
her breath. It is hot and wet and I am afraid, I don't really
know why," Freida says.
"Yo u have too much imagination," Mary says and
hugs Freida. "We are working people, and need our rest.
Don't waste your sleep. Go back to bed, don't look at the
aunt. Sleep on your other side,'; Mary says.
*

*

*

Sonya is sitting on Mother's bed. "You shouldn't have
put her in that Home," she says.
"Mo ther was too sick to stay here," Fay says.
"You are going to leave me here?" Mother said.
"There are movies every Thursday night, Grandma,"
Barbara said.
"I have lived without movies before," Mother said,
"You are going to leave me here?"
"You'll get better faster here ," Fay said.
"You are going to leave me here to die," Mother said.
She tied her bathrobe tight around her and started shaking
her head.
Every Sunday for a month we come to see her, then
every other Sunday. She says that she enjoys the movies
and that she has some friends. Her doctor tells us that she
won't leave her room. She says that he lies. She wants to
come home. We tell her that she is too sick. She says that
she is fine. The doctor puts medicine in her food to make
her sleepy, she tells us. She won't eat. She sighs. We sigh.
We leave. She dies.
*

*

*

23

The mirrors are all covered by sheets, when Freida
gets home from school. Her father is sitting at the kitchen
table, with Bela on his lap, talking to a strange man. "She's
dead?" Freida says, meaning the crippled aunt, "I could tell
by the way she breathed."
"She's dead," Ruben says.
"Momma," Bela says.
"Shad, Bela," Ruben says.
"What about Momma?" Freida says.
"She's dead," Ruben says.
"Momma's dead?" Freida says.
"Who else?" Ruben says.
'The aunt," Freida whispers.
"What?" Ruben says.
"Nothing," Freida says, "I don't understand. You said
Momma was on a vacation."
'Tuberculosis," the stranger says, "Your mother was
in a sanitarium."
"You said she was tired and needed to rest, " Freid a
says.
"I thought she would get better," Ruben says.
"I don't understand," Freida says.
Ruben closes the laundry and takes his family back to
Budapest. They live in a small room in Pest. Ruben works
as a roofer. He cannot afford the bright clothes he would
like to buy for his daughter. Bela is confused by the
language. The streets are dirty, the Danube is brown.
Ruben takes the children to the park. He shows them the
zoo, buys them balloons at the playground, and feeds them
rich Hungarian food.
One Sunday, they picnic on the side of the Danube
and take a steamboat ride up the river to St. Margarita's
Island. Ruben tells the children that they are going back to
America . He can find no work in Pest. They will live with
Uncle Abe and Aunt Bessie. "It will be good," Ruben says .
"It is going to be good," Freida says. A week later,
they ride a steamboat back to America. Freida drops out of
school, she works part time at a dairy and cleans and cooks
for her uncle and for her own family.
*

*

*

I tell Barbara and Alison to go downstairs, watch
television and relax. I follow them downstairs to the den .
They sit, as they did when they were very young, on two
alligator-shaped cushions . I want to pretend that they are
young and that it is Sunday, that we are watching a
Bowery Boys movie and that we are laughing. I can't.
Always in the background, I hear Mother, coughing,
calling, spitting, flushing the toilet. I feel her shuffling
down the stairs, her backless slippers making a thumping
sound as they hit her feet. She wears a rose-colored

bathrobe, a flannel nightgown and white bobby socks.
Blowing her nose into a tissue, she says that she doesn't feel
well, but she won' t, she won't, take a pill.
I go back upstairs. In a little while Barbara appears at
the doorway of Mother's room .
"What's wrong?" I say.
'Tm scared," she says.
"Of what?" I say.
"Grandma's ghost," she says .
"There are no such things as ghosts," Fay says.
"Listen to your mother," I say.
'Tm scared, " Barbara says in a long whisper. I take
her hand. She refuses to enter Mother's room.
"What's wrong?" I say . She does not answer. I know it
is the portrait over the bed that bothers her. I see her
standing with Alison in the doorway of Mother's room.
They are staring at Mother in bed. They stare at her illness,
at the old lady being swallowed up and drawn into the
room. She does not recognize them.
"Sonya," she says, "Father will be late tonight."
"Fay," she says, "Uncle Bela is coming to dinner, set
an extra place." Her freckled 'face folds at the wrinkles, her
arms sag.
"For Mother's Day," she says, "I want a pair of silk
stockings and some new garters." The phone rings and she
screams.
"My mother is dead," she says, in a little girl voice,
"Bela, Momma is dead? Vacation. She is dead . Poppa,
what will we do? Go live with Uncle Abe? Of course. It
will be good."
When we take her to the home, there is more stocking
wrapped around the garter than around the bottom part of
her leg.
"She is dead," I say to Barbara.
"I know, " Barbara says. We stare at the picture,
together.
Fay is filling a carton with nightgowns and scarves
and old stockings. "The funeral," she says, "We have to
talk about the funeral."
"We have time," Sonya says, "We have time."
"No, we should talk about the funeral," I say.
"Momma would have wanted a religious ceremony,"
Fay says.
"We have time, " Sonya says, "We have time ."
"Why don't you rest for a little while?" I say .
Sonya says that she will and goes downstairs to
Alison .
Fay finds an old hat on the top shelf of Mother's
closet. It is made of brown felt and has a lopsided button
face with a blue ribbon mouth, pasted on it. Inside the
words, 'Love, Bela,' are stitched in red thread. Fay cries.
"It will be all right," I say, "Everything is going to be
fine."
As I take the hat from Fay, something in its rim cuts
my hand and I begin to bleed. My hands are soft and the
skin tears easily.

Meredith Adler, a member of the Class of 1976, is editor of
The Tripod. Ms. Adler's "Old Sing-Song Rhythms"
received first prize in the prose fiction category at Honors
Day ceremonies on May 12, 1976.

24

What I've Learned from Working with Indians

I'd like to take you on your first visit to a Navajo
Yeibichai (yay-bih-chay) ceremony. It gets its name from
yei (yay) who are a group of Navajo supernatural Holy
Beings.
A yeibichai is a curing ceremony that goes on
continuously for nine days and nine nights. There will
have been a diagnosis by a hand-trembler as to the kind of
"Indian sickness" for which a yeibichai is relevant. So, for
Navajos it is an important religious occasion. No medic,
no priest or preacher and no psychologist can cure "Indian
sickness" - a thing of the spirit.
We're going on the last night which is the only night
on which masked dancers appear. They won't show until
around ten o'clock, and nothing in Indian life requires
clock time.
Such major ceremonies can properly be conducted
only between first frost (beginning of winter) and last frost
(beginning of spring). It's in summertime that the social
dances take place. The one we're to attend is being held in
mid-November. Snow is not yet too deep for us. But we
won't head for the site until after dinner.
I warn you to don layers of your warmest clothing ~
long johns, warm socks, heavy wool trousers and sweater,
a heavy overcoat. The only "extra" garment the stoic
Indians will carry along will be their Pendleton wool
"Indian blankets ." But at 5,000 to 8,000 feet up, in
mountains that rise to 10,000 feet, cold will penetrate
within a few hours anything a white person wears .
When we arrive, we see we are the only two or three
anglo spectators. Around a thousand Navajo men, women
and children of all ages are already assembled. Some are
standing: holding their blankf;'ts drawn tightly just below
black eyes peering around . Many are sitting close to tiny
campfires, talking in tones too low for us to hear, or
munching food, or simply dozing . The silence alone tells
you things are different here from those where you dwell.
You perhaps wonder if you are still in the United States.
Eventually, a file of some seven or eight masked
dancers emerges . They are bare-legged and bare-chested in
the cold. All wear short kilts, their bodies painted with
white clay. At the end of the file is a masked clown. He
wears a coyote tail and prances gaily. The crowd smiles
silently.
There is no drum. All is quiet. The dancers stoop in
unison and shake their rattles close to the ground . Then
they join in a penetrating falsetto chorus. It is a sound that
can be heard nowhere else off the Navajo reservation and
in no other country in the world. It is as eerie as must be
the sound of supernaturals singing . And it is so shrill it
spreads for several miles across the land.
The dancers stomp and move in jerky steps, around
an elongated circle half a dozen times. Their movements
emphasize their eerie song.
There are two "teams" of dancers who alternate all
through the night. You stand around perhaps half an hour
between appearances of the two teams. I hate to say it, but
if your reactions are anything like most firsttime visitors,
it'll be something like this:

by George A. Boyce

You begin to wonder. A religious ritual? You are not
accustomed to having a clown appear in church . People
sleeping! The Puritans used to have someone tap churchsleepers over the head with a long pole. People talking
during the ceremony? Not in your church. The same dance
and the same song all night long? It's boring. Let's go, it's
getting cold.
But this is what I learned: The cure for a patient is a
process of achieving and restoring harmony among all the
clan's members and with all-powerful Holy Beings. The
patient's clan members have come by wagon, or
horseback, or pick-up truck and afoot for miles upon
miles. They have been here the first eight days and nights
feasting together, praying together, working together.
Perhaps in a white man's church, some members may
actually envy, look down upon, or have other negative
attitudes toward the preacher or a fellow congregationalist
in the very same pew. And if anyone should make a
mistake in any way, there will be belittling talk sooner or
later.
But not here . Such attitudes would completely negate
the "power" of the ceremony. The cure would not work.
The clown is a vehicle and symbol of avoidance of
anything untoward taking place. It is a group affair.
Harmony, by definition, is a group affair.
As for the monotony of the same dance and the same
song repetitively sung all night long, the anglos place value
on change and variety. The Navajos take a different view.
Their having been long dependent upon and close to
Nature, when Mother Earth provided squash in the fall, for
days there was only squash to eat. Or only corn while it
lasted. Or peaches . Or beans . To complain about
monotony would be ungrateful to Nature. Thus, from
experience of necessity, the Navajo belief became "when
something is good, let's have more of it." Tradition is the
"good life ." Change is Sin.
Not a really bad view, is it? Not much different from a
youngster whose mother has prepared a different sandwich
Jor a change for lunch . What is the complaint. "No more
peanut butter?"
*

*

*

Navajo religion is filled with anxieties and taboos.
They believe that their Holy Beings, and other forms of
supernaturals, are not to be fully trusted. Supernaturals
are capable of performing misdeeds and harm as well as
good deeds in human affairs . Some of today's non-Indians
you've heard about know about witches too .
Hence, Navajos have a great fear of the dead being
infiltrated by evil spirits. If at all possible, they'll get a
white person to do the burying. During World War II, with
a great shortage of doctors and nurses even in the few
hospitals, Red Cross short courses in first-aid were offered.

25

But we avoided those sections having to do with trying to
revive persons struck by lightning!
On one occasion, technicians had selected an
apparently fine site for a new school building in a very
isolated part of the reservation. When they heard about the
site being chosen, Navajos of the area said they would not
send their children to the proposed school. Why? Ancient
bones had been found there. And any such place was
chindee- filled with evil spirits. So we moved the site.
What this clearly told me: Don't make decisions for
Indians without consulting Indians. This is one of their
major complaints.
*

*

*

It is a widespread notion that "Indian thinking" is
childish. Not so. Indians are an extremely logical people.
They can get right down to the root of a proposal. They
follow our familiar Greek syllogism; e.g. (a) a premise,
(b) a fact, (c) therefore, a conclusion, such as (a) all men
are mortal, (b) you are a man, (c) therefore, you are
mortal.
In the case of Navajo thinking, much of it is done by
analogy, with the premise that like brings like . However,
they often start with a false premise. This logically leads to
a false conclusion . An example: (a) To talk about death
will bring death. (b) He talked about death. (c) Therefore,
he died. This is how erroneous taboos get started.
One particular episode involving such thinking comes
to mind. I had received an emergency call for assistance
from one of the larger boarding schools in the least
acculturated part of the reservation. Altogether, as
Director of sixty-five Navajo and Hopi Schools of various
sizes during the 1940's, I expected emergency calls daily.
In this case, some two hundred school children shortly
after breakfast had become stricken with food poisoning.
A substitute cook had unwittingly left perishable food
overnight in the hot kitchen when it should have been in a
refrigerator.
It took a fast three-hour drive over rough, dirt roads
to get there. One mother with tears of anguish was
waiting. She wanted to take her boy out of school, back to
her hogan, immediately. The school was chindee in her
opinion .
All I knew so far was that the one-doctor hospital
nearby was filled with sick children. To stall for time, I
explained to her, through an interpreter, that it was time
for all of us to eat. I invited her to have lunch with the
children . Fortunately there were some still on their feet.
As I had assured her, after lunch I took the mother to
the dormitory . The employee in charge told me the boy
had been taken to the hospital during the noon-hour. He
wasn't in the dormitory!
Efforts to comfort her were fruitless. She followed me
to the hospital where I asked for the boy. "He's being given
intravenous injection and can't be seen right now, " a nurse
said. So far, every step to communicate was down a blind
alley of mistrust by the mother. She said she wanted to
take her boy to a medicine man . In that event the child was
likely to die. And every Navajo mother would take her
child home, closing a chindee school for an unpredictable
number of years.

26

In desperation, I asked the mother if she had ever been
in a hospital. The answer was "no ."
We went into the kitchen where I asked a nurse to
open the refrigerator door. It was full of bottles and vials
of medicines that had to be kept cool. Through an
interpreter, I said, "See, the doctor here has strong powers
too, some the medicine man does not have. "
She nodded in silence.
We went downstairs into the basement. A large room
was filled with bins of oranges, apples, potatoes, all sorts
of food. "See, the white-man doctor has many kinds of
special foods for different sicknesses."
I seemed to be making progress, and at least was
gaining time for the doctor .
Then into a wire-screened room with a locked door to
protect it. The nurse unlocked the door and let us in . There
were shelves upon shelves tightly packed with clear
bottles, dark brown bottles, green bottles - all sorts of
bottles and containers. I repeated the gesture: "See, this
doctor can cure many kinds of sickness."
Saying something in Navajo to the interpreter, the
mother looked at me.
The interpreter translated. "She wants to know where
is the pill for tuberculosis?" Stupid? She had hit the root of
her worries.
Now, if I evaded I would surely lose the battle.
Perhaps the life of a boy. There is much pathos in working
with Indians. All I could do was to say earnestly, "Nobody
yet has a pill for tuberculosis."
We went back upstairs. The doctor was now
available. He showed her the sick boy. She agreed she
would leave her boy in the hospital for three more days . .
Then she would be back.
The lesson: Nowhere in the world is intercultural
communication the simple problem of having an
interpreter or even speaking the same tongue . You can
communicate with a person or group of markedly different
culture only on the basis of the listeners' experiences. To
communicate solely on the basis of our culture won't get
across.
This was strikingly reaffirmed by untrained Navajo
interpreters used by the government stockman. To control
soil depletion and erosion caused by overgrazing, the
government was unyielding at that time in forcing Navajos
to reduce cattle, horses, sheep and goats to half the
numbers they had been running . The stockmen called one
sheep "one sheep unit."
They said horses ate five times as much forage as
sheep. So a horse was referred to as five sheep units.
Interpreters, feeble in English, were saying in Navajo
that "a horse eats five sheep ." Naturally , such nonsense
created distrust of all government programs - education,
health and so on.
It was at this time that members of the educational
staff developed a system of writing and printing Navajo on
an ordinary typewriter with a change of only two keys.
With the backing of Willard W. Beatty, Director of Indian
Education, a one-page newspaper in Navajo was
developed. Effort was taken, until war prevented
continuance, to teach at least one or two Navajos in each
so-called community to read it. In that manner stock

reduction and everything else became presentable reservation-wide in the newspaper in one correct way.
There was much controversy caused at that time by
opponents who mistakenly accused the government of
wasting money by teaching Navajos their own language
instead of English. Actually the program 路 was teaching
Navajos to be able to read their own language for the first
time in history. Now, at long last, there are elementary
schools and high schools for all the children. A high
percentage of high school graduates go on to college . And
the tribe now runs a magazine-size newspaper of its own in
English.
Today, Indians are saying in regard to federal and
all-Indian public schools on the reservation, "Let us run
schools our way ." They want to be free to make as many
mistakes as do the non-Indians!
Let me cite one other experience regarding intercultural communication .
Back in the 1940's, trachoma , which is a blindnesscausing viral infection, was widespread . During the school
year, a specialist in successful treatment with sulphanilamid spotted school children suffering with trachoma.
When the boarding school at Ft. Defiance, Ariz., closed for
the summer, the facilities were used to assemble trachomainfected children for the two-weeks sulphanilamid
treatment.
Parents were informed to come and get their children
on the second Friday. But the very Friday they were to go
h ome, several cases of measles were discovered .
Measles creates exceedingly high fever among Indian
people. They rapidly go into pneumonia . In earlier times,
measles killed more Indians than all the soldiers' bullets . It
was hazardous to disperse the children from the special
trachoma school and perhaps start a reservation-wide
epidemic .
So, another emergency call came to the Director of
Navajo Schools. The report was that one father in
particular was adamantly demanding to take his boy out.
When he talked to me, and I told him there was measles in
the group, he asked, "Does my boy have measles?" No. In
that case he wanted to take his boy home before he too got
measles!
I tried a long shot. "It is true that if your boy stays
here he may catch measles . This place is like a sheep corral.
When a few sheep have sickness, it is wise to keep all the
sheep in the corral. Many of them may become sick. But if
you let any of them onto the range before all are well, the
sickness may spread to your brothers' sheep, your sisters'
sheep and all other sheep on the reservation."
He nodded his head in agreement and left his boy until
we told him the children could all go home .
*

*

*

A question frequently raised by visitors from all over
the world was: "Which tribe do you think is the smartest? "
The question rather implies that none can be as bright as
the whites!
Our ancestors indeed made a great leap forward when
they organized what was intended .to be a multicultural
democracy. However, in practice, peoples of European
ancestry have pursued a Darwinistic racist, scientifically

invalid policy that "survival of the fittest" means it is the
white race that is wisest and has all the "bright boys ."
Therefore, whites should dominate.
Indeed there are valid differences in cultural behaviors
due to historical reasons, geographical and environmental
reasons, social and economic opportunities. But data
indicate that all races - black, brown, yellow, red and
white - have an equal proportion of brilliance . In short,
the dark-skinned "dope" who still hunts with bow and
arrow and has never seen an automobile may be as smart
as the white "moron" who drives furiously along a freeway
in Los Angeles.
I have cited Navajo experiences to illustrate some
learnings from working with Indians. Many other
important learnings could be illustrated with Sioux,
Cheyennes, Cherokees and all the others. When superintending the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, I
met students annually from over eighty different tribes,
not always the very same tribes, but from Aleuts to Zunis.
*

*

*

Before closing, let me present a few facts about
Wounded Knee so recently headlined in the daily news.
This involves taking a look at the Paiute Indians. Today,
Paiute bands are scattered in tiny groups in Nevada, in
Utah, in the Death Valley region of California and one tiny
group of roughly three or four dozen in a corner of the
Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona.
Once, Paiutes were scattered in family-size groups
over most of the Great Basin desert area - the poorest,
most destitute Indians in North America .
Theirs was a land of drifting dunes, white-crusted
alkali deposits, dried-up ancient lakes, pools of briny
water, dry washes and gullies that ran only during
cloudbursts of rain. It was a land nearly treeless, where
little more than desert cacti and sagebrush grew.
The largest game to be hunted was an occasional
jackrabbit, unpalatable to most tribes. For food, Paiute
people had to keep moving. Every member of a family
would help gather grasshoppers, crickets, lizards, maggots,
mice . These were mostly trapped by first digging a dry well
about ten to twelve feet across and about four feet deep.
Then they formed a thin circle covering several acres,
depending upon how many persons were in the group.
Waving branches of sagebrush, they converged slowly
to ward the hole in the center of the circle. In this manner
such a trap would sometimes be filled to the brim with
grasshoppers, other insects and rodents. These were
roasted on sharp sticks or boiled into a paste and soup.
When frost came in the fall, they wandered to distant
mountains. There they stayed until snow became too deep.
They gathered tiny nuts the size and color of coffee beans
that fell out of pine cones high in the tree tops. Other
Indians thought the Paiutes were "nutty" and called them
Nut Eaters .
Their stone tools, too heavy to be saved and carried
far, were so primitive that whites and other Indians looked
down upon them as being the most stupid of all people.
And when white miners, soldiers and settlers began
heading west across this region, they often chased and
hunted defenseless Paiutes "for the fun of it."

27

Incidentally, a Nevada Paiute teenage girl who came
to the art institute proved to be such a creative weaver and
da Vinci-type sketcher she went on to attend the Rhode
Island School of Design, then later became one of the
instructors at what is now the junior college level Institute
of American Indian Arts.
However, a widespread attitude toward the "Indian
problem" in the past century was succinctly expressed by a
clergyman in Massachusetts in 1882: "We have a full right,
by our own best wisdom, and then even by compulsion, to
dictate terms and conditions to them; to use constraint and
force, to say what we intend to do, and what they must
and shall do . . . This rightful power of ours will relieve us
from conforming to , or even consulting to any troublesome extent, the views and inclinations of Indians whom
we are to manage."*
In 1888, in increasing despair, an outstanding Paiute
named Wovoka had a religious dream during an eclipse of
the sun. He had learned a little about Christianity . In his
dream, he believed God was talking directly to him ,
ghostlike. The message, Wovoka believed, was that
inasmuch as a Messiah had once been sent to earth to help
white people, a Messiah was now to come to the Indian
people to help them. And he, Wovoka, was to go forth and
preach peace and brotherhood.
Believers in this new Indian religion, through
ritualistic dances known as the Ghost Dance cult, felt that
they would now be protected fully from their oppressors.
And the symbolic garments they donned would be
bullet-proof.
Wovoka's preaching spread to other despairing tribes
- Shoshonis, Bannocks, Crows. Then across the Rocky
Mountains eastward to Cheyennes, Arapahos, Wichitas
and other tribes of the Great Plains. Excitement mounted
in Indian camps, and alarm soon pervaded government
officials. When Sioux Indians in the Dakotas were reported
to be engaging in Ghost Dance rituals, orders were sent out
from Washington to the western military commanders to
curtail this religious practice .
Police and troops of cavalry were dispatched to bring
in Sioux chief Sitting Bull, in whose camp a Ghost Dance
ritual was being held.
When the military arrived, somebody shot one of the
policemen who in turn managed to shoot and kill Sitting
Bull. The soldiers immediately sought frenzied revenge,
while Indians panicked in all directions.
Some Sioux reached Wounded Knee, eighteen miles
away. Soon the gathering crowd was surrounded by
soldiers who had been ordered to disarm the Indians. With
great "caution," cannon were trained on the tipis, and
bayoneted rifles were carried at the ready. In the general
melee and pushing around, an Indian shot an officer.
Instantly, some three hundred squatting Sioux were shot.
later, bodies of Sioux men, women and children were
found strung out for three miles.
Thus, religion that originated with the deeply
spiritual-minded Paiutes, led in a roundabout way to the
massacre in distant South Dakota. The wounds administered at Wounded Knee that day in 1890 still bleed .

28

Hard to believe, as late as 1923 the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs declared that long-standing "silly" religious
Indian dancing in New Mexico should be put to a stop. It
was only angry protests by reputable white citizens that led
to the order being withdrawn.
In a recent article, former White House aide John
Ehrlichman wrote a public admission of behind-the-scenes
discussion on the 1973 Indian episode at Wounded Knee.
According to him, the White House and top Justice
Department officials "met with Army people to learn their
views on how to handle such a problem. " The military
high command's position was reported to be that they
should either go in fully or stay out fully. But if the "Army
was asked to do it, they would use tanks, a minimum of a
division of troops and go full scale."
Fortunately the White House rejected such an assault
- a potential repetition of the first "battle" of Wounded
Knee. Is it not to be expected that some young Indians
today are aggrieved for many reasons, including past acts
in the name of Christianity?
Others may have a different view than I have
acquired. And certainly neither friends of the Indians nor
the bulk of older Indians condone the acts of the young
militants . However, with the cultural role of minorities in a
multicultural democracy still so beclouded in our political
philosophy and practice, may this not be a major reason
for some of the kinds of trouble the nation is now going
through? Might not a policy of fostering, rather than just
putting-up with, cultural difference be a rewarding
investment?

Dr. George A. Boyce, Class of 1920, Han. 1968, joined the
Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1938. His activities included
developing a comprehensive social-economic plan for the
vast Navajo Reservation. He was director of 65 Navajo
and Hopi Schools, launching the nation's largest boarding
school (1,000 girls; 1,300 boys) and founding superintendent of the Institute of American Indian Arts. Retired in
1966, two of his books were published in 1974.
*Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), p. 238.

CROSSINGS

By Stephen Minot
(Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1975)

Reviewed by Samuel C. Coale
Perhaps the most important attribute of the short
story as a narrative form is its economy . Because of the
limited length of this form, all events, incidents, and the
language itself must be, at once, brief, concentrated,
intense and concise. There is no time in the short story to
describe events at great length or to go into protracted
analyses of the main characters' psychological and / or
sociological backgrounds. Events and character can only
be suggested, not described in detail. The art of the short
story rests on implication and concentration, not upon
description and lengthy explanations and, therefore, is
perhaps the most difficult literary form after the poem.
In a novel the author has time to develop his ideas, to
analyze and elaborate in greater detail the inner growth
and development of his characters . He can examine
carefully and minutely the several strands of deed and idea
that make up his lengthy narrative. In the short story,
particularly in the modern short story as devised by James
Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway,
usually one incident, and one main incident alone, must
reveal all there is to know at the heart of the tale. One
incident illuminates character; one major act must serve as
the symbolic and illuminating action . This single symbolic
act in a short story must replace the extended analysis and
descriptive detail that the novel may linger over.
The modern short story usually reveals a character or
characters in a moment of crisis or revelation, in what
Sherwood Anderson called a "significant moment," in
what Joyce called an "epiphany ." In these precise moments
within the short story all must be revealed by implication
- a person's character, a flaw in the situation, the
environmental influence of a particular setting . Consequently language must be exact and precise; emotions
must be concentrated and precisely rendered . It is as if a
short story were a glimpse into a single window in a large
apartment house. All must be revealed quickly and
economically, as sharp and as forthright as that
momentary glimpse will allow . The novel form would be
more concerned with the entire building, not with just the
one window, and could well afford the extended period of
time it would require to describe the entire building in full ,
explore how it came to be there, and who the different
people are that live there .

In his book on the writing of fiction , poetry and
drama, Three Genres, Steve Minot has made these similar
points about the nature of the short story. In fact he shows
us how one of the best stories in Crossings, "Windy
Fourth, " came to be transformed from personal experience
into fictional achievement. It is fascinating to see his
methods in operation, the conscious attention to detail, the
implications of language, the crossbreeding among
character development, dialogue, and setting. The story
grows, develops, changes shape, shifts in his hand like the
wet clay in the potter's fingers: we see the layers building,
the perceptions carefully put into place.
Minot is a superb craftsman of the modern short
story, not of the contemporary bizarre story such as a
Pynchon or a Barthelme may design, but of the beautifully
crafted tale of a Joyce or a Hemingway. In fact his
references to Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of
Francis Macomber" come up again and again in his
discussion of fiction. He shares Hemingway's precise
rendering of detail, the purity of the line, the careful
observation of the sequence of motion and fact which
reveals the emotions and significant resonances of the
story. Minot's is a refined , elemental prose, beautifully
honed , nothing digressive, unnecessary or tangential: the
whole is pruned carefully, "stripped down" without
overblown metaphors or sloppy self-indulgent "arty"
twists. His sharp eye for the details of sailing, of the Maine
coast, of changes in the weather, 'of shifts in a character's
awareness never seems to fail him: he grounds us in the
harsh, beautiful presences of the natural world, within
which revelation and understanding steal upon us. We feel
the elemental sense of ritual here, the passing from
childhood to adulthood, from innocence to wisdom, and
view it as part of the natural slopes and terrors of the
surrounding landscape.
In Three Genres Minot suggests that fiction deals with
"the event or sequence of events which changed one's
attitude toward another person," and his first chosen
example of such a theme is that shift in attitude between
child and parent. The over-riding theme of Crossings does
seem to be precisely this, the rise and fall of generations in
each other's estimation, particularly the need of sons to
come to some kind of recognition about their fathers. This
essential search for communion, for the son's self-identity
unearthed in the diaries, the silent reproaches, the wistful
glances, the uncertain demands of the father, permeate the
book. Each must cross toward a recognition of the sanctity
and self-possession of the other. Such moments appear
suddenly, quietly, inevitably in Minot's world: they are
rites of passage, the secret ceremonies of life which mark
our private growths and griefs. In "Sausage and Beer" a
son visits his crazy uncle in a mental hospital with his
father. In "Mars Revisited," a stunning and frightening tale
of the outraged chaos of the Sixties, a father searches for
his son amid the rubble and terror of the riot-torn world
around him. In "Estuaries" a son, now in his forties,
re-reads the diaries of his father and feels the stirrings of
genuine and incomprehensible love, "a blend of fascination
and reverence."
Transformations and shifts in perspective stalk
Minot's landscape. Rational men, those career-oriented
creatures who believe in an abstract order above and
beyond the chaos of the world (whether they find it in
academe, in civil engineering, in design schools), are
forever discovering that their hold upon reality is tenuous
at best, non-existent at worst. In "Bruno in the Hall of
Mirrors" a man walks onto a stage in the middle of a play
and finds his complete livingroom there, intact. And
someone else is playing him! In "Mars Revisited" the world

29

has become a moonscape, crowded with visions of war,
police sirens, rooftop flights and crowds of faceless people.
In "Greek Mysteries" an assistant professor of fine arts
goes on a picnic with his wife and three daughters, marvels
at the color and the sunlight about him (this after days of
rain and gloom suddenly sees an ominous hooded man on
a pony rising out of nowhere (a figure of death?), and races
to find his family who have scattered and gotten lost,
leaving him to his private reveries.
Minot's stories are peppered, infiltrated with images,
incidents, intimations of myths, legends, and Biblical
events. Such resonances deepen his tales, increase the
unobserved ceremoniousness of life through which his
characters are passing. And the careful, precise prose style
reflects this ritualistic sense of change and revelation.
Don't get the wrong idea. These are not dry
explanations about humanity nor are they fuzzy flashbacks
of mysterious and uncertain soul-searchings. Minot's
stories are firmly grounded in reality, in the facts of the
natural world, particularly in the salt estuaries and craggy
shelves of rock of the Maine coast. Four of these tales deal
directly with the Bates family , a prolific Maine-spawned
brood that suggests the intricate complexities and
character-centered dilemmas of Faulkner's Southern
generations. There's Isaac, the "Old Man" of the clan, a
finely spun character in all his self-centered and graciously
rugged determinations. He broods over the book, perhaps
as some k~nd of archetypal father whose blessing the
several uprooted sons are seeking. And there are the
women, often alien, always mysterious creatures, whose
discontent or satisfaction can darken or lighten the
landscape.
As in Hemingway the natural world is often beautiful,
more often harsh and soulless, man's order jeopardized by
winter storms, hurricanes, unexpected squalls. Against this
reality men dig in with as much grace and dignity as they
can possibly muster. And it's this doggedness, this "purity"
of effort that Minot admires in his men and women, a
clear-headed unsentimental sentiment that illuminates the
depths of his folk. You could almost call him tender were
his portraits not so realistically drawn and carefully
detailed. It's this human concern, however, which makes
the stories linger in the mind, and no mere technique or
fascination with art or delight in modern western decay
can compensate for it. It's this that makes Minot's stories
continue to haunt us , and that haunting can save us.
Auth o r Steph en Minot , a member of the faculty since
1959, is associate professor of English , part-time. Reviewer
Dr. Samuel C. Coale, a member of the Class of 1965, is an
associate professor of English at Wheaton College in
Massachusetts.

A MATTER OF INTELLIGENCE
By George Wittman
(New York: Macmillan, 1975)

Reviewed by J. R. Spencer
One of the hallmarks of popular culture in the Cold
War Era has been our continuing preoccupation with spies
and particularly spy novels. Some of the voluminous
literature can be readily dismissed as merely updated
fantasy-escapism. The appeal of the enormously popular
James Bond series, for instance, rests at least as much in its
time-honored motifs of sex and swashbuckle as in its
background of East-West conflict and its futuristic

30

technology. At heart Bond is only Errol Flynn, despite the
overtones of Captain Video .
Harder to dismiss are such writers as John LeCarre,
Len Deighton and Robert Littel. We might characterize
their work as "novels of intelligence" in both senses of the
term. They provide fascinating (and, one suspects,
accurate) insights into the mysterious world of espionage
and counterespionage. The men (and occasionally women)
who occupy this world are moved by strange passions and
strong commitments. Though their calling is singularly
amoral, they often adhere to a complicated professional
code, a bizarre etiquette, in their dealings with one
another . Above all, they are convinced human affairs can
be comprehended, manipulated, controlled by the relentless application of logic, by their own peculiar version of
reason. Suggestive is the remark made by Leo Diamond,
the central figure in Littel's The Defection of A. J.
Lewinter: "In my business . . . there's no such thing as
coincidence."
The world of Cold War spy and counterspy may
affect our destiny, but we have rarely been able to explore
its inner recesses since a curtain of secrecy surrounds it.
There are exceptions, to be sure. The Penkovskiy Papers
(1965) and Kim Philby's autobiographical My Silent War
(1968) are helpful. But since both were essentially
propaganda ventures - the former for the American side,
the latter for the Soviet - one must treat them with
considerable skepticism. Recent sensational revelations
about the CIA - the leaked Report of the House Select
Committee on Intelligence, for example, or Victor
Marchetti and John Marks' The CIA and the Cult of
Intelligence (1974) - are illuminating, as is, in a different
way, Miles Copeland's Beyond Cloak and Dagger (1975).
With the partial exception of Copeland, however, these
works concentrate on covert operations designed to
influence the affairs of other nations by means of
assassination , subsidies to foreign politicians and so forth.
They tell us relatively little about the modes of classic
espionage and counterespionage. On this subject the well
informed novelist remains perhaps our best guide.
George Wittman's A Matter of Intelligence is an
engaging and informative addition to the literature. In a
prefatory note the author states that, though this is a work
of fiction, its "principal characters and events . . . are
drawn from composites and distillations of contemporary
history. " One is inclined to credit Wittman's claim to
verisimilitude since he, like LeCarre and Graham Greene,
both of whom worked for British intelligence, writes with
an "insider's" knowledge. After a stint in the Special
Operations branch of Military Intelligence during the
Korean War, Wittman headed a private firm that did
defense analysis for Washington and handled certain
political matters for foreign governments. He has also been
a senior staffer at the Hudson Institute, the influential
"think tank" perhaps best known as the sometime home of
Herman Kahn , who specialized in "thinking the unthinkable" in such books as On Thermonuclear War.
Like most first-line examples of the genre , A Matter of
Intelligence is skillfully plotted. The central figure is Alex
Schneider, a Soviet KGB agent who assumed the identity
of an orphaned American youth at the end of World War II
and who has been operating since then as a "deep
singleton" in the United States. Slowly he has risen to
prominence: State Department translator of unclassified
material ; editor at the Voice of America; a brief sojourn at
the Rand Corporation; an executive post with a New York
foundation. Now he is well ensconced as a respected
"defense intellectual" at a think tank in Connecticut.
Equally important, he is being recruited for "singleton"

work by the CIA! Thirty years of carefully maintained
deception are about to reach fruition, for Alex is on the
verge of penetrating to the heart of the American
intelligence establishment. But circumstances - specifically the Soviets' sudden need for a secret U.S. report on a
laser anti-ballistic missile device- turn the entire situation
topsy-turvy. It would scarcely be fair to reveal the details
of what ensues. Suffice it to say that Wittman leads the
reader through a cleverly contrived series of episodes that
are at once bizarre and altogether credible. The ironic
twistings and turnings of plot often bring to mind the best
of LeCarre's work.
In addition to its well told tale, the novel is
distinguished by two other features: first, its apparently
realistic portrayal of the workings of both the Soviet and
American intelligence bureaucracies, and, second, its
subtle psychological treatment of Alex, the man who has
led a double life for three decades. The latter deserves some
comment.
In The Spy Who Came in From the Cold Le Carre
describes the extraordinary emotional strains felt by the
agen路t-who leads a protracted life of deception. He must be
a consummate actor, yet he can never receive applause for
the "audience" must never know it is a "performance." He
must steel his will to subdue natural impulses which, if
given vent, could betray him.
Alex Schneider knows such strains only too well, for
he leads a "mind-splitting, life-splitting existence." The
psychic consequences fascinate Wittman, who deploys
some of his best prose in describing them. In KGB training,
A lex donned one protecti'v e layer after another to guard
against self-betrayal. Once, a brief affair with the wife of a
French diplomatic official in Washington cut through the
protective shell, but in the aftermath Alex "flogged himself
into submission, restructuring, reinforcing, reordering the
layers - cauterizing the will. The whole instrument
rebuilt, made stronger by the knowledge of the weakness."
But now time is taking its toll: "His existence in
chiaroscuro, making the grays work in delicate balance,
had created a terrifying weariness and loneliness. It had
been too long .. , It was not that he sought another life, for
he knew no other. And there was no question of why. He
knew why. He never allowed himself to question why. The
question was how. How to live, how to do, how to be. He
was not a man, he was an action. He was dedicated to
movement. He himself had created the body and being of
this movement. Was this his only self?" Ultimately, we find
it p lausible that Alex's crisis of identity, coupled with his
abandonment by the KGB apparatus which has sustained
him, should drive him to suicide.
All in all, Wittman has produced a splendid book.
One does not have to be addicted to the genre - as I am
not - to derive both pleasure and understanding from it.

Author George Wittman is a member of the Class of 1951.
He has spent many years writing and working in the field .
of international security affairs. This is his first novel.
Reviewer ]. Ronald Spencer, Class of 1964, is dean of
students and instructor in the Department of History.
RULING FROM HORSEBACK: Manchu Politics in
the Oboi Regency, 1661-1669
By Robert B. Oxnam
(Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1975)
Reviewed by Tina Endicott West

Professor Robert B. Oxnam's new book represents an
important contribution to the study of the conquest and
rule of China by non-Chinese peoples. As Professor
Oxnam points out, almost half of recorded Chinese history
is the history of non-Chinese rule of China (p .4).
Unfortunately, until recently many Chinese and Western
historians have accepted to a great extent the biases of the
traditional Chinese histories in portraying non-Chinese
conquerors as culturally inferior "barbarians." The
traditional Chinese historiographical bias towards nonChinese minorities within China and towards non-Chinese
rulers of China can be traced back at least as far as the
second century B.C., when Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145-?90B.C.)
wrote the first comprehensive history of China, the Shih
chi (Records of the Historian). Though Ssu-ma Ch'ien
travelled among various "barbarian" peoples and described
their relations with the Chinese ruling house, he,
revealingly, did not describe their indigenous cultures.
In Ruling from Horseback, Professor Oxnam examines the political, cultural, and institutional tensions which
the Manchu rulers of China faced after their establishment
of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1644. Specifically, he uses the
heuristic device of a tension between "sinification" on the
one hand and "Manchu dominance" on the other to
analyze the policies of the Oboi regency, which lasted from
1661 to 1669. "Sinification" is defined as the "overriding
commitment of a ruling group to governance by Chinese
institutions, Chinese officials, arid Chinese ideology,"
while "Manchu dominance" is defined as "an overriding
commitment to governance by Manchu institutions,
officials, and ideology" (p.2). Previous studies of the early
years of Manchu rule in China have stressed the
"sinification" of the Manchus, even before they had swept
down from Manchuria to establish the Ch'ing Dynasty.
Franz Michael's 1942 study, The Origin of Manchu Rule in
China, unequivocally upholds the sinification theory:
The barbarians brought, of course, certain elements
and political conceptions of their own with them. But,
as already indicated, they had to adapt themselves to
a Chinese form of political organization, had to use
Chinese political instruments and, to a high degree,
Chinese officials. They had to rule China in the
Chinese way. (p.7)
In contrast to this view, Oxnam proposes that the
period when the four regents (Oboi being the most
powerful) ruled on behalf of the young K' ang-hsi Emperor
represented the "last stand of Manchu conservatism."
Through a well-researched analysis of the regents' use of
Manchu-oriented institutions, of their methods of exerting
control in the provinces, and of their military and foreign
policies, Oxnam persuasively portrays the regents as
"ruling from horseback." (The traditional Chinese dictum
observes that "though the empire can be conquered on
horseback, it cannot be ruled from horseback.") In
Chapter Four, "The Regency and the Metropolitan
Bureaucracy," the author presents his most convincing
evidence of the Manchu - as opposed to Chinese orientation in government policies and decisions in the
1660's; Oxnam shows that the key institutional adjustments made by the regents amounted to emphasizing
Manchu institutions, such as the Council of Deliberative
Officials, while devaluing the role of Chinese institutions.
The evidence in Chapter Four is central to Oxnam's
thesis of "Manchu dominance" during the Oboi regency.
Alterations in the function and composition of institutions
would seem to reflect carefully thought out decisions on
the part of the regents . In contrast, the decisions made by
the regents concerning the governing of the provinces

31

(dealt with in Chapter Five) were based on insufficient, and
at times willfully distorted, information coming from
provincial government figures. It should be pointed out
that the process of the Manchu conquest of China
continued far into the reign of the K'ang-hsi Emperor, who
ruled in his own right from 1669 to 1722. Local control by
representatives of the emperor remained a serious and
unsolved problem: witness the Rebellion of the Three
Feudatories which engulfed large areas of southern and
western China in 1673. Thus the ruthlessness with which
the regents treated various members of the provincial elite
in southeastern China (see Chapter Five) may not reflect,
as Oxnam maintains, a deliberate policy of "Manchu
dominance," or even the "Manchu's [sic] deep suspicions
about the Chinese elite" (p.l12), but, rather, may reflect
the more general problem of the interaction of local society
with a newly established dynasty, whether that dynasty be
Chinese or non-Chinese.
Though Professor Oxnam's treatment of the tensions
between "sinification" and "Manchu dominance" during
the Oboi regency presents convincing evidence of the
regents' deliberate attempt to mold Chinese institutions
and culture into a Manchu pattern, the question remains
whether the regency is best thought of as the "last stand of
Manchu conservatism" or as a nine-year deviation in a
comparatively rapid process of cultural sinification . In
using the words "comparatively rapid," I am suggesting
that when compared to the previous non-Chinese dynasty,
the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1260-1368), the Manchus did
indeed adapt to certain aspects of Chinese civilization
rather quickly . For example, the first Ch'ing Dynasty ruler,
the Shun-chih Emperor (ruled 1643-1661), was literate in
Chinese and favored Chinese culture and institutions. The
second Ch'ing ruler, the K'ang-hsi Emperor, could read
and write Chinese well enough to deal with state
documents. For comparison's sake, it should be pointed
out that the first Mongol ruler of the Yuan Dynasty,
Qubilai (ruled 1260-1294), was essentially illiterate both in
Chinese and in the Uighur script which the Mongols had
adopted. Under Qubilai's reign, decrees in Chinese were
read aloud to the emperor and verbally translated into
Mongolian. The German scholar, Herbert Franke, has
pointed out in an article entitled "Could the Mongol
Emperors Read and Write Chinese?" that it was not until
the Jen-tsung Emperor (ruled 1312-1321) that a Mongol
ruler exhibited a clear interest in Chinese language, script,
and literature.
In view of the enormous importance of non-Chinese
rule to the history of China, the possibilities for
comparison of Manchu rule with the rule of other
non-Chinese dynasties seem virtually unlimited . Ruling
from Horseback only hints at the larger questions of
Chinese - non-Chinese relations, though it is perhaps
unfair to expect a work which concentrates on a nine-year
period to treat the Manchu conquest in broader
comparative terms.
It is unfortunate that until recently few studies of alien
conquest and rule of China have viewed this phenomenon
in its proper perspective: as the interaction between two
distinct cultures. The failure to acknowledge the importance of non-Chinese cultures stems in large part from
ignorance on the part of most historians of China of the
languages of non-Chinese conquest peoples. These
li~gui-stic limitations, in turn, cause historians to become
captives of their Chinese sources and the sinocentric bias
which these sources contain. The general narrowness of
linguistic skills and consequent absence of comparative
perspective have naturally forced historians to ignore the
pre-conquest history of non-Chinese rulers of China.

32

Extraordinarily valuable sources exist (especially Manchu
sources) for this kind of study, yet they remain to a great
extent untapped by historians who cannot read them.
Ruling from Horseback , though limited by the
author's inability to read Manchu, represents a hopeful
first step in the direction of examining non-Chinese
conquest peoples in their own right. Professor Oxnam's
work should encourage other scholars of the early Ch'ing
period to study the Manchu language, and thus acquire a
more balanced understanding of the role which nonChinese people played in the course of Chinese history.

Author Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, an associate professor of
history is on sabbatical and is serving as director of the
Asia Society's China Council in New York City. Reviewer
Tina Endicott West is a member of the Class of 1974. She is
currently in the M.A. program at Yale in East Asian
studies.

ALSO NOTED

From rather humble beginnings the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving has grown - first slowly, then
rapidly - into one of the nation's largest and most
beneficial community trusts for philanthropic purposes .
Established late in 1925, it made its first gr ant in 1936; the
amount was only 982 dollars, awarded to the Watkinson
Library. By 1974, however, the contributions of Hartfordarea donors had swelled the Foundation's assets to over 24
million dollars, and it had some 1 .6 million available for
annual distribution . Thus it plays a vital role in the support
of educational, cultural, recreational and social service
institutions and agencies in Hartford and the twenty-one
surrounding towns which are eligible for its beneficence .
Glenn Weaver, professor of history at Trinity,
chronicles the activities of this exceptionally valuable
institution in a brief but highly informative new book,
Hartford Foundation for Public Giving: The First Fifty
Years (Hartford: Hartford Foundation for Public Giving,
1975 ). In addition to seventy pages of crisply written
narrative, the volume provides several useful appendices :
thumbnail biographies of the twenty-one citizens who have
served on the Foundation's Distribution Committee; a
roster of past and present Trustees; an inventory of the
various trust funds composing the Foundation's assets,
together with their original book value ; and, finally, a list
of the more than 250 institutions and organizations helped
by the Foundation, including the number and total amount
of the grants made to each. This last item suggests it is
particularly appropriate that a member of the Trinity
faculty should have written this history, for over the years
the Foundation has made twelve awards, totaling over four
hundred thousand dollars, to the College. Only six
recipients have been awarded more.
In his closing paragraph, Professor Weaver expresses
the hope that his book will interest additional Greater
Hartford residents in making grants and bequests to the
Foundation . In view of the Foundation's outstanding
record of service to the community, one can only share this
hope.